Sri Lanka navy in high seas gun battles

Sri Lanka’s navy and ethnic Tamil rebels engaged in a high-sea gun battle that lasted until dawn today, the military said, claiming to have sunk 12 rebel boats, including five suicide craft, and killing about 80 rebels.

The fighting broke out late yesterday when about 20 boats belonging to the Tigers’ fierce sea wing attacked a navy patrol near Kankasanthurai harbour, to the east of the northern Jaffna peninsula, an official at the Media Centre for National Security said.

The navy patrol – including fast attack gun boats – pushed the Tiger boats into the sea off Point Pedro in Jaffna, where the gun battle lasted until about 3:30am today, the official said, declining to be named, citing policy.

He said 12 rebel boats were sunk, including five suicide craft – high speed attack vessels laden with explosives that the Tigers ram into naval boats with deadly effect – and that about 80 Tigers were killed.

Two navy boats were slightly damaged, and two sailors wounded, he said.

The pro-rebel website TamilNet, however, said two navy vessels were sunk and a third damaged. It said about 30 sailors were still missing.

The Media Centre for National Security official said the rebel boats were heading to Kankasanthurai port, which is part of the maritime lifeline for the military’s 43,000 troops in northern Jaffna peninsula.

Military supplies and reinforcements are shipped along the east coast of the teardrop shaped island from Trincomalee port in the northeast to Kankasanthurai.

Military spokesman Brig. Prasad Samarasinghe said the military yesterday continued to pound rebel artillery bases in Sampur, south of Trincomalee.

Insurgents in Sampur have been firing artillery and mortars at the Trincomalee port, and the military launched an operation Sunday to flush rebels from the area. Sampur is a 50-square km area across the lagoon from the Trincomalee naval base.

The military claims to have killed 101 Tigers and wounded 100 more in the combined navy, army and air force operation since Sunday. Only 14 soldiers have been killed, it says.

The rebels reported 82 deaths – 50 government soldiers, 12 rebel fighters and 20 civilians.

The push to retake Sampur has opened a new front in the country’s more than two-decade civil conflict with the rebels, who want to establish a homeland for the country’s ethnic Tamil minority, claiming discrimination by the majority Sinhalese.

In recent months, Sri Lanka has returned to the brink of full-scale civil war with hundreds of fighters and civilians killed in major offensives. However, neither side has officially withdrawn from a 2002 Norway-brokered ceasefire.

About 220,000 people have been made homeless by near-daily shelling, airstrikes and artillery fire since April, according to the United Nations.

The Tigers have fought the government since 1983. The conflict killed more than 65,000 people before the ceasefire.