Sri Lanka’s military said on Tuesday it had captured a stretch of the Tamil Tigers’ defences along a battlefront in the island’s restive east and killed around 30 fighters, but the Tigers denied it. The clash at the village of Panichchankerni in the eastern district of Batticaloa comes as the military seeks to drive the Tigers out of a coastal pocket of territory they control under the terms of a tattered 2002 truce. An estimated 10,000-15,000 Tamil civilians are trapped slightly further north within rebel territory after 20,000 others fled to government areas in recent weeks to escape the crossfire of artillery duels. “One soldier died and 15 were injured. More than 30 dead bodies of Tiger terrorists are lying in the area,” a spokesman for Media Center for National Security said about the latest clash amid a new chapter of a two-decade civil war.
Air Force jets also bombed rebel targets around 10 miles further north of the defence line, but there were no immediate details of casualties. The Tigers said only seven of their fighters were injured in the fighting, that none were killed, and that they had repulsed the attack and were still in control of the “border” that separates their territory from government-controlled areas. Nordic truce monitors had not visited the area and it was not immediately possible to independently confirm either side’s claims.
A powerful claymore mine exploded at a government office in northern Sri Lanka on Tuesday, killing two constables, police said. Suspected Tamil Tiger rebels planted the bomb on a motorcycle that was parked at the district secretariat in the town of Vavuniya, 260 kilometres north of Colombo, police said.
Torture cells: The military posted photographs on its website showing small concrete cells with kennel-like iron grills which it said were used to keep rebel deserters and informants at one of 15 rebel camps overrun this month. The military also said the commandos had found a cannabis crop and the remains of elephants which suggested they were killed for their tusks.
The Tigers laughed off the accusations, saying they didn’t have any bases in the area and denied torture cells existed anywhere in areas held by them. “The government is desperately in need of some successful stories ... They may have walked in to some huts and not bases, because our bases are far from there,” rebel military spokesman Rasiah Ilanthiraiyan said by telephone from their northern stronghold.