Tamil Tigers attack military positions

Tamil rebel planes bombed government military positions in northern Sri Lanka today in their second airstrike.

The military said six soldiers were wounded but that the aircraft were turned back before reaching a key base.

The Tamil Tiger rebels said two planes carried out the attack on the government’s Palaly military base in northern Jaffna peninsula, and that air and storage facilities were struck.

The Defence Ministry’s information centre said, however, that the attack was launched by a single plane and that soldiers opened fire, forcing it to turn back before it reached the Palaly base. But the plane did drop bombs on nearby bunkers, wounding six soldiers, the ministry said.

“Our planes have attacked the air facility and a storage in Palaly,” Tiger spokesman Rasiah Ilanthirayan said from the rebel stronghold of Kilinochchi. “It may have caused damage to their command chain located within the base.”

Palaly is a strategic military base with an air strip and functions as the headquarters for military operations against Tamil Tiger guerrillas in the north. It is also the supply base for tens of thousands of soldiers stationed in the ethnic Tamil-majority Jaffna peninsula.

It was the second rebel airstrike since they started their campaign for a homeland for the country’s Tamil minority in 1983. The first was launched last month, when at least one rebel propeller plane bombed a Sri Lankan air force base outside the capital, Colombo, killing three airmen and wounding 16.

Yesterday, Sri Lankan officials ordered Norway’s ambassador, who is trying to mediate a resumption of peace negotiations, to cancel a trip to the Tamil Tiger rebels’ northern strongholds for security reasons.

The directive came amid rising fears that the government was preparing to launch a military offensive in the north after weeks of near-daily airstrikes and artillery attacks on positions held by the Tamil separatists.

Government air forces bombed a rebel sea base and a moving column of guerrillas separately in the country’s north and east yesterday, according to the military.

A cease-fire mediated by Norway in 2002 brought hopes of peace for a few years, but violence over the past 18 months has killed 4,000 people, taking the death toll from more than two decades of war past 69,000.