79 dead as Sri Lanka forces battle Tamil Tigers

Sri Lanka’s armed forces and Tamil Tiger rebels traded artillery fire overnight, as the military advanced on a strategic Tiger-held enclave in the northeast in an assault that has killed at least 79 people, the military said today.

Military spokesman Brig. Prasad Samarasinghe said 13 soldiers and 66 insurgents had been killed since Sunday, when the army, navy and air force launched a combined operation to retake Tiger-held Sampur.

The insurgents said air strikes and shelling yesterday killed 20 civilians in the Sampur area, in northeast Trincomalee district, but did not say how many fighters were killed.

Samarasinghe denied there were any civilian casualties and said the targets were all military.

It is virtually impossible to independently confirm casualty reports because conflict zones are restricted to outsiders, and European monitors of a 2002 truce have withdrawn from their Trincomalee office, citing deteriorating security.

The push to retake Sampur opens a new front in the more than two-decade conflict between ethnic Tamil rebels and the Sinhalese-dominated government, which was temporarily halted by a 2002 cease-fire.

Samarasinghe said the military and Tigers traded artillery overnight, and that the operation was ongoing to loosen the rebels’ hold on the area south of Trincomalee naval base and specifically to destroy their fire power.

“Our aim is to neutralise (rebel) artillery and heavy mortar bases. Yesterday we destroyed a minimum of three artillery bases,” Samarasinghe said today.

“These bases are a very big threat. The (rebels) have been firing at the naval base and also at civilians in the area,” he said.

He said at least 13 soldiers had been killed and 79 wounded, with as many as 66 insurgents killed.

He would not elaborate on how the military accounted for rebel casualties.

The country’s top-ranking military official, Lt. Gen. Sarath Fonseka, told The Associated Press yesterday that the operation was intended to safeguard the strategic Trincomalee harbour and navy base.

He said the insurgents have been using four villages south of Trincomalee to fire artillery and mortars at the base.

“If the (rebels) continue to attack the harbour it will paralyse the Trincomalee to Jaffna supply route,” the general said.

The Sri Lankan military is reliant upon the Trincomalee port to supply its more than 43,000 troops on Jaffna Peninsula, as the road link passes through rebel territory.

The Tigers took up arms in 1983, claiming that the country’s 3.2 million Tamils needed a separate homeland away from the discrimination of the majority Sinhalese.

The resulting conflict cost the lives of at least 65,000 people before the 2002 cease-fire halted large-scale fighting.

In recent months, however, Sri Lanka has returned to the brink of full-scale war, with both sides launching major military offensives, although neither has officially withdrawn from the cease-fire.

Hundreds of combatants and civilians have been killed since late July, and 204,000 people have been displaced by near-daily airstrikes and shelling.