Fighting rages in north S.Lanka, army says winning

By Peter Apps

COLOMBO (Reuters) – Heavy fighting and artillery fire raged
on Sri Lanka’s northern Jaffna peninsula on Sunday as the army
said it had pushed back a Tamil Tiger rebel offensive in the
heaviest fighting since a 2002 truce.

On Saturday the Tigers broke through army defences on the
army-held peninsula, where some 40,000 troops, mainly from the
Sinhalese majority, are based in a Tamil-dominated area cut off
from the rest of the island by rebel territory. Telephone
contact with the area is extremely difficult. A senior army
source in the area said that the night had been relatively
quiet but that the military had launched a major operation
around first light. Aid workers reported heavy shelling.

“The area is now totally under control,” an army spokesman
said, although analysts were sceptical. “We have pushed them
back behind their FDL (forward defense line).”

Aid workers reported an unknown number of civilians from
rebel territory fleeing south toward the rebel headquarters in
Kilinochchi as air force spotter planes flew overhead. Most
relief staff sheltered in clearly marked compounds.

Truce monitors said they believed the Liberation Tigers of
Tamil Eelam (LTTE) were trying to cut supply lines to Jaffna,
which has changed hands several times in two decades of a
bitter war that has killed more than 65,000 people.

The birthplace of most of the rebel leadership and cultural
center of their fight for a homeland for minority Tamils,
Jaffna has long been seen as a key rebel objective. Devastated
by fighting, it had begun slowly to rebuild.

AIR SUPPLY THREATENED

“Last night, it was looking pretty grim,” said Janes’
Defense Weekly analyst Iqbal Athas, pointing to unexpected
Tiger artillery fire on the main air base. “With the air base
under fire, one of the umbilicals to Jaffna has been cut.”

The military said 27 personnel had been killed and 87
wounded so far in the Jaffna battle, which erupted after days
of fighting further south initially sparked by the July closure
of a rebel-held sluice gate providing water to government
territory.

Aid workers reported some outgoing artillery fire from the
northeastern port of Trincomalee overnight as well as fighting
in the eastern district of Batticaloa, where police said
Special Task Force commandos had attacked a rebel camp.

The fighting has been accompanied by killings and attempted
assassinations in the island’s south, well away from the front
lines. On Saturday evening, gunmen shot the deputy head of the
government peace secretariat Kethesh Loganathan, an ethnic
Tamil, in the capital. He died overnight in hospital.

The government blames the rebels, who have long targeted
dissenting Tamil voices. Loganathan supported the government’s
military campaign against the rebels and last week told Reuters
the international community was “mollycoddling” the LTTE.

Most diplomats had blamed the Tigers for an escalation of
violence this year that killed more than 800 people even before
ground fighting began. But many now blame the government for
triggering all-out war by over-reacting to the water dispute.

During the fighting, the Tigers are accused of massacring
fleeing Muslims and using civilians as human shields, while
truce monitors say the government is obstructing a probe into
the execution-style killings of 17 mainly Tamil aid staff. Some
of the families already blame the military for the murders.