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| Sri Lanka | |
| Lankan troops capture rebel base in north | |
| 2008-05-31 | |
| Government troops have captured a Tamil Tiger rebel base in northern Sri Lanka after three days of fighting that killed seven rebels and one soldier, the military said yesterday. Army troops captured the stronghold known as Munnagam Base on Thursday, said military spokesman Brig. Udaya Nanayakkara. He said the base, located four miles north of the front lines in Welioya region, had been used by the guerrillas as an operational centre. He said the three-day battle to seize the base had killed seven rebels and one soldier. Five other soldiers were wounded. Other fighting Thursday in the Mannar and Vavuniya regions near the rebels' de facto state in the north killed four rebels and wounded eight soldiers, he said. Rebel spokesman Rasiah Ilanthirayan could not immediately be reached for comment. It was not possible to independently verify the military's claims because journalists are banned from the northern jungles where much of the fighting takes place. Each side commonly exaggerates its enemy's casualties while playing down its own. Fighting has escalated in recent months along the war's front lines. The Tamil Tiger rebels have fought since 1983 to create an independent state for ethnic minority Tamils who have suffered marginalisation by successive governments controlled by ethnic Sinhalese. More than 70,000 people have been killed in the conflict. Meanwhile, Sri Lanka called on Western powers Thursday to be wary of imposing sanctions for its alleged human rights violations, warning that the action could worsen the island's long-running ethnic conflict. The United States and the European Union have withheld various aid programmes and are debating whether to withdraw special trade benefits from Sri Lanka amid concerns the human rights situation has deteriorated since the government pulled out of a Norwegian-brokered truce with the Tamil Tigers in January. "It really is necessary to have sympathy for and understanding of the problems of a developing country that is grappling with terrorism," Sri Lanka's minister of international trade GL Peiris said in Washington. "And to cut off resources, to threaten to withdraw trade benefits, GSP (General System of Preference) and so on -- all of that is unhelpful because that will only mean the dissemination of poverty, deprivation and adversity," he told AFP. Peiris said under such sanctions and other pressures on "a democratic government pitted against terrorism, you can't possibly prevail." Peiris was in Washington for talks with US officials and to woo US investors to set up shop in Sri Lanka's eastern province, where Tamil Tiger rebels were removed from enclaves after heavy fighting last year. Sri Lanka's President Mahinda Rajapakse vowed this week to press on with a military campaign to crush the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE), who have been fighting for a homeland since 1972. Expressing concern over the rights violations and the raging civil war, the US State Department said Thursday that there was no military solution to the ethnic conflict, and emphasized the need for a political settlement.
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| Posted by:Fred |