Sri Lanka news columns

The Sri Lankan defence secretary has called on foreign countries to hand over Tamil Tiger rebels and their assets, worth of millions of dollars. The demand by Gotabaya Rajapaksa came weeks after the arrest of the new Tamil Tiger leader, Selvarasa Pathmanathan. Mr Pathmanathan was arrested in a South East Asian nation earlier this month and brought to Colombo in a swift and secretive operation. He is currently being interrogated by Sri Lankan security officials. The Sri Lankan military declared victory over Tamil Tiger rebels in May this year. Overseas assets Mr Pathmanathan is the most senior leader of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) to be caught alive by Sri Lankan security forces. "He's a seasoned man, so he's coming out with information very slowly during interrogation. He was the person who ran a massive network to purchase arms and ammunition for the LTTE for nearly 30 years," Mr Rajapaksa told the BBC. Tamil Tiger rebels Mr Pathmanathan is alleged to...

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By Ranga Jayasuriya The fourth Eelam war has entered a decisive stage with troops moving as close as four kilometres of Kilinochchi city limits, the administrative headquarters of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam. Last week, Army Commander Lt. Gen Sarath Fonseka went on record, claiming at a book launch by journalist Tissa Ravindra Perera, that troops would fire the first salvos at guerillas defending the town next week. Some military units are in the vicinity of the southern perimeters of Kilinochchi and troops are in sight of city buildings there. Past battles On Friday, troops of the 57 Division captured Kokavil, south of Kilinochchi for the first time since 1990. On June 11, 1990, the Kokavil military camp - which housed 69 men commanded by young Lt. Saliya Upul Aladeniya - came under LTTE attack. The fall of Kokavil in 1990 was a fiasco in a long list of past military blunders. But, it also highlighted the valour of troops who fought to the las...

By Our Special Correspondent LONDON, Sept 23: Pointing out a number of parallels between the terrorist tactics of LTTE and those of the Al Qaeda-Taliban combine, Sri Lankan Defence spokesman and cabinet minister Keheliya Rambukwella has claimed that the latter has been drawing extensively from Tamil Tigers’ book of terrorist tricks. Referring to Saturday’s truck bombing of Marriott hotel in Islamabad, Mr Rambukwella said a similar truck bomb of almost similar intensity had been rammed through the gates of Colombo’s Central Bank by LTTE terrorists in 1996, killing 91 people. Mr Rambukwella was speaking to the media at the Sri Lankan High Commission where Pakistan’s media representatives and correspondents of Pakistan-based media organisations were specially invited. He claimed that the current technology of a suicide jacket used by Al Qaeda was actually developed by the Tamil Tigers. He said the Sri Lankan government had now stopped all peace negotiations with the LTTE. “You see after e...

A new threat looms over the advancing troops in the Wanni war theatre. The Sri Lanka Army, just five kilometres away from the administrative headquarters of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) were pushing forward, when, on two separate occasions they came under unexpected non-lethal gas attacks in the Kilinochchi district. This situation has raised concerns among defence officials. On Monday evening, troops from the 57 Division fighting in the Akkarayankulam area in Kilinochchi district noticed some soldiers behaving in an unusual manner Several soldiers had started vomiting and there were burn injuries on a few of them as well. All the affected soldiers developed breathing difficulties. Soon some six soldiers of the battalion were rushed to the Anuradhapura hospital and special attention was given to these soldiers with several doctors of the hospital examining them. Later it was revealed that these soldiers had suffered a gas attack. Following this situation the Defenc...

International nod for Govt’s moves to recall INGOs from Wanni All mechanisms in place for welfare of IDPs Forces to enter A9 soon The Tiger leadership is facing an acute shortage of cadres to defend Kilinochchi as intelligence reports indicates that Theepan has asked to send 60 Tiger cadres operating on the Muhamalai front to defend the Kilinochchi front. Their task is becoming more hectic as the 59 Division which is operating from the Weli Oya front has already completed their mission within the Andankulam forest reserve and entered a massive open area south of Mullaitivu. If there was any obstacle which could hinder the efforts of the Security Forces to liberate the Wanni, the troops have overcome almost all the obstacles within this week and laid a solid foundation to clear their path towards liberating Kilinochchi the administrative ‘capital’ of the LTTE which is only five and a half kilometres off from the last soldier in the b...

COLOMBO (Reuters) - Sri Lanka's Tamil Tigers will go underground rather than "fight to the last man" once a northern offensive that has cut their strength to 3,000 fighters from 12,000 nears its end, Sri Lanka's army chief said on Thursday. Lieutenant-General Sarath Fonseka also said he had no clear timeframe for retaking territory held by the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE), because his aim was killing all of the insurgents rather than seizing ground. "We don't want to end up in a situation like in Iraq when you're moving fast, but you’ve left behind a whole army who will resort to guerrilla tactics," Fonseka told Reuters in an interview at Army Headquarters in Colombo. "Therefore I don't give a timeframe," said the 38-year-veteran who was appointed army commander in 2005. Ground troops have steadily fought through the northern jungles of the Indian Ocean island and smashed LTTE outposts, bunkers and trenches with air strike su...

Sukumari Surpana in Colombo September 18, 2008 The over two-year-old war between the Sri Lanka military and the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam has by all accounts reached a decisive phase. It is crunch time for both sides though it would be hazardous to predict the next chapter. On the face of it the Sri Lankan military has an upper hand. The Tigers have been cornered like never before, the Indian Peace Keeping Force phase included, from within and without. With the military taking the battle right into the Tiger heartland in Wanni, the LTTE has little choice but to do or die. Even after providing a liberal allowance for the tendency on the part of the Sri Lanka military to exaggerate its triumphs, the relentless military campaign by the Mahinda Rajapaksa regime has substantially weakened the LTTE's military capabilities. This is evident in the inability of the Tigers to strike back in the east where they no longer count as a conventional force, its failure to mount any spectac...

Ranil WIJAYAPALA colombo: Army Commander Lt. General Sarath Fonseka told the Daily News yesterday that Security Forces operating in Wanni are ready to face any type of gas attacks by the LTTE as they have been equipped with gas masks to face such situations. Confirming that LTTE had fired two canisters of CS gas in Akkarayankulam and Vannivilankulam, the Army Commander said it was not a chemical weapon but a gas which is being used for anti hijacking operations worldwide. CS is a substance that is used as a riot control agent and is generally accepted as being non-lethal. CS gas has been discovered by two Americans, Ben Corson and Roger Staughton, at Middlebury College in 1928, and the chemical gets its name from the first letters of the scientists' surnames. "If the LTTE fires CS canisters at us gas we have the capability fire more powerful gases against them as we have the mandate as a sovereign state to make use of these gases to curb any terror activity of the LTTE," ...

(09-14) 04:00 PDT Colombo, Sri Lanka -- For the first time in more than a decade, government forces are making inroads into rebel strongholds and are within striking distance of their capital, according to military officials who insist an end to Asia's longest civil war is near. Such forecasts are nothing new for this 25-year conflict between the military and the separatist Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (more commonly known as the LTTE or Tamil Tigers). While some observers say it's still too soon to talk of total victory, there's little dispute that the latest army offensive has forced the guerrillas to abandon large parts of their de facto state and given the government unprecedented momentum. An international crackdown on rebel fundraising and smuggling networks and high-level defections have also undermined grassroots support for the Tigers' iron-willed chief, Velupillai Prabhakaran, most analysts agree. "There is no denying that as far as ongoing positional...

BY Dayan Jayatilleka Fascists launch a final surge before they lose wars. The Kamikaze pilots were a last card against the US fleet. The Nazis developed the Tiger tank, launched the V-1 and V-2 rockets and fought the Battle of the Bulge in the closing stages of the war, when they had already lost in the strategic sense. The battle of Iwo Jima is the classic model of a fanatical, suicidal, dug–in fighting force defending its home turf against a final onslaught. It was the toughest possible going but the US Marines won. It is only to be expected that the Tigers would offer the stiffest possible resistance in their Ithiyabhoomi or ‘heartland’. In their best case scenario they would turn Kilinochchi–Mullaitivu into a meat-grinder and then launch tactical counteroffensives which could develop into strategic ones, reversing their losses. The Tigers’ strategy containing these two scenarios can be defeated by a combination of superior thinking and planning, strategy and tactics, resources and...

Rafik Jalaldeen VAVUNIYA : Air Force fighter jets carried out air sorties yesterday afternoon targeting LTTE camps in Kanakarayankulam, Vavuniya causing heavy damage to the Tiger outfit. Air Force spokesman Wing Commander Janaka Nanayakkara said Air Force fighters carried out precise air raids targeting the LTTE camps located two kilometres South of Kanakarayankulam. “The target was located east of the A-9 trunk road in Vavuniya and the air raid was launched around 1.00 p.m.,” he added. In another mission, SLAF fighter jets pounded a LTTE heavy weapons and ammunition facility 2.5 Km north-east of Udayarakattakulam, Mullaitivu. The Air Force fighter pilots confirmed that the air raids were effective and successful. The air attacks were launched following accurate information provided from ground intelligence sources and air surveillance. The air raids came hours after an LTTE light aircraft was shot down in the skies of Mullaitivu followin...

By C. Bryson Hull COLOMBO, Sept 7 (Reuters) - Sri Lanka's advance into Tamil rebels' heartland has unleashed the bloodiest combat in a decade and opened a new phase of the 25-year-old conflict, but conventional military success won't mean an end to war. Over the past three weeks, the army has thrust into territory held by the separatist guerrillas and are within artillery range of Kilinochchi, the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam's (LTTE) administrative headquarters and symbolic prize for the government. The advance has provoked some critics to warn things could turn out like 1999, when the army pushed itself deep into Tiger territory only to be shoved back ferociously in a matter of days. Analysts say this time the military has the upper hand, fighting on four fronts to encircle the rebels while striking the LTTE's naval assets and hitting it with artillery, ground forces and air strikes. It does not, however, mean an easy road ahead. "They have achieved a sma...