Lankan troops kill 30 Tigers in jungle battle

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FE Team | Published: June 10, 2007 00:00:00 | Updated: February 01, 2018 00:00:00

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COLOMBO, Jun 9 (AFP): At least 30 Tamil Tiger rebels and one soldier were killed when Sri Lankan troops overran four guerrilla jungle bases, the defence ministry said Saturday.
Soldiers captured the bases of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) during an offensive late Friday and early Saturday in the eastern Batticaloa district, the ministry said.
"The army confirms that 30 LTTE terrorists have been killed in the confrontations, including three who had committed suicide in desperation," the ministry said in a statement.
It said one soldier was killed and 17 others were wounded in the battles.
There was no available comment from the rebels. Both sides are known to inflate the losses of the other side while playing down their own casualties.
The report came as Japan's special envoy, Yasushi Akashi, was ending a four-day visit to the island Saturday. He said he was hopeful that the troubled peace process could be salvaged.
The escalating fighting since December 2005 has shattered a 2002 truce brokered by Norway. Since then, more than 5,000 people have been killed in the ethnic conflict.
Meanwhile, Sri Lankan media Saturday condemned the government over the eviction of hundreds of minority Tamils from the capital at gunpoint, and praised the Supreme Court for halting the move.
"While extraordinary measures are certainly called for to meet the growing threat of terrorism, the eviction of Tamils from any part of the country on any ground cannot be countenanced," said The Island, a privately-run, English-language newspaper.
Earlier this week, heavily-armed police and troops forced hundreds of Tamil men, women and children on to buses which took them 256 kilometres (160 miles) to the northern town of Vavuniya, near the battle zone with Tamil Tiger rebels.
"Treating all Tamils as Tigers will only help to push the innocent Tamils to the lap of the Tigers," said the Lankadeepa newspaper, published in the majority Sinhalese-language.
The Daily Mirror, a Sinhalese-owned newspaper, said the police action was a "clear and serious violation" of human rights of the Tamil minority and contributed to ethnic divisions.
After the Supreme Court order President Mahinda Rajapakse invited evicted people back to Colombo and ordered a disciplinary probe against the police chief responsible for the mass arrest and eviction.
Police sources said they were trying to undo the damage by bussing the Tamils back to Colombo. "Out of 272 held at the Vavuniya centre, we brought back 186 early this morning," a police official in Vavuniya said by telephone.
Nine people were killed in and around Colombo, a city of 600,000, in two blasts last month by suspected Tamil rebels believed to have used cheap lodgings similar to those targeted in the raids.