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| Sri Lanka |
| Lanka moves toward Tigers' jungle base |
| 2009-01-05 |
| Sri Lanka's army said yesterday it was moving in on the jungle stronghold of the Tamil Tiger rebels, in a final assault aimed at ending the longest-running ethnic war in Asia. Flush with confidence after retaking their main city two days ago, the army vowed to capture rebel leader Velupillai Prabhakaran as troops pushed deeper into northern territory long under the complete control of the guerrillas. Sri Lankan President Mahinda Rajapakse said in a New Year's address that 2009 would be the year of "heroic victory" over the Tigers, who have been waging war since 1972 to establish an independent homeland for ethnic Tamils. Troops captured Kilinochchi, the de facto capital of the rebel state within a state on Friday, and the general leading the assault said his forces were now advancing on Mullaittivu, their last major centre of control. "We are taking the offensive to the Mullaittivu jungles where Prabhakaran is hiding," Major General Jagath Dias told reporters flown into Kilinochchi for a short and carefully supervised visit to show the city was in army hands. "We will hunt him down." Journalists found a desolate town in which most of the buildings had been badly damaged or reduced to rubble by months of bombardment. The only remaining residents appeared to be a group of 22 Tamil women, children and older men sheltering at the town's defunct hospital, a AFP reporter said. "We were ordered by the Tigers to leave but our family did not want to go," a 17-year-old girl named Komalasingham Thurasiha said. "We fled to the jungles and stayed there for a few days before returning today." Gunfire and artillery barrages could be heard nearby during the press visit, but military officers said it was safe to travel within the town as all Tiger snipers had been driven away. For nearly two years, Sri Lanka has banned independent reporters from rebel-held areas, including Kilinochchi. The vastly outnumbered rebels, formally known as the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE), had controlled the town for a decade and have frustrated government hopes of victory many times before. Hours after losing Kilinochchi Friday, a Tiger suicide bomber in the capital Colombo killed two people and wounded 36. Six months after a major strategic loss in 1995, the rebels overran an army base and killed 1,200 soldiers. |
| Posted by:Fred |