Tigers clash with ex-Tigers – S.Lanka army

By Peter Apps

COLOMBO (Reuters) – Tamil Tiger rebels and a renegade
ex-Tigers group were fighting each other in the east of the
country on Sunday, Sri Lanka’s army said, with war fears still
high after a suicide bombing and government air strikes.

But it said the military was not involved in the clashes.

The Tigers have long accused the army of using ex-rebels
led by former Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) commander
Karuna Amman to attack them. The army denies the charge, but
Nordic truce monitors say Karuna operates from government areas
and the military has been at least turning a blind eye.

“There has been some firing and some attacks,” said army
spokesman Brigadier Prasad Samarasinghe. “LTTE and Karuna. Both
parties are fighting.”

An eastern military source said it appeared the Tigers were
attacking Karuna forces in jungle areas of what is officially
army-controlled territory. It was unclear how heavy the
fighting was.

More than 120 people have died in the bloodiest three weeks
since a 2002 truce halted two decades of civil war, with a
series of fragmentation mine attacks on troops, a suicide
attack on army headquarters and government air strikes on rebel
positions.

But with air strikes now halted, diplomats hope the island
is stepping back from the brink. Both sides say they want to
attend talks in Switzerland that are currently indefinitely
postponed.

The process is currently deadlocked on the issue of
transporting eastern rebel leaders to a pre-talks meeting at
the main rebel headquarters. Currently, the two sides cannot
agree where a seaplane carrying the commanders should land.

Analysts say the rebels are angry that, despite promising
to disarm armed Tamil groups in government territory, the
military has taken no action against Karuna. With the ex-rebels
seen valuable to the army if war comes, few expect the
government to disarm his men.

The spokesman said the attacks took place around the
eastern town of Welikanda, widely seen as a Karuna stronghold.
He said that while it was officially a government-held area,
the military had no presence there.

Earlier in the week, a United Nations report said there was
“circumstantial evidence” that the government backed Karuna,
who says he wants to supplant the mainstream LTTE, and that
police did nothing to investigate killings by his men.

Killings blamed on both Karuna and the Tigers are common in
the east, but the Tigers appear to have also retaliated for
Karuna attacks by attacking the army. The rebels deny carrying
out any attacks, but few analysts or diplomats believe them.