Sri Lankan warplanes pounded Tamil Tiger rebel positions in the islandÂ’s volatile north and east on Friday, while rebels fired mortars at advancing ground troops in the east, killing six soldiers, the military said. Military spokesman Brig Prasad Samarasinghe said soldiers advancing into the Thoppigala region, the final rebel stronghold in eastern Sri Lanka, faced long-range mortar attacks from the insurgents around noon Friday. Six soldiers died in the attack and about five others were wounded, Samarasinghe said.
He said that despite the attacks, the soldiers were closing in on getting total control of the region. “We are in the final leg of clearing the area,” Samarasinghe said. Air force jets also bombed rebel locations on Friday to back up troops in Thoppigala, Samarasinghe said. A second airstrike hit an identified rebel location in the northern Mannar district, Samarasinghe said, without elaborating.
He did not provide casualty estimates, and rebel officials could not immediately be reached for comment. Government forces have cleared the Tamil Tiger guerrillas from much of eastern Sri Lanka, but have been struggling to seize the eastern rebel bastion of Thoppigala for 14 years.
Elsewhere, soldiers acting on a tip recovered a haul of explosives and ammunition from a village north of the eastern port town of Trincomalee Thursday night, Samarasinghe said. The cache contained more than 100 bombs and 8,200 assault rifle bullets, Samarasinghe said. Many villages north of Trincomalee were under rebel control until a military assault last year, and guerrillas likely abandoned their weaponry as they fled the area, Samarasinghe said.
The rebels have fought since 1983 to create an independent homeland for Sri LankaÂ’s ethnic minority Tamils, who have suffered decades of discrimination by majority Sinhalese-controlled governments. Assassinations, airstrikes and clashes have killed more than 5,000 people in the past 20 months, and have taken the death toll in two decades of violence past 70,000.
A Norway-brokered cease-fire signed in 2002 still holds officially, and neither side has withdrawn from it fearing international criticism.