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| Sri Lanka |
| Sri Lanka's Tamil Tigers bomb military in north |
| 2008-04-28 |
| Tamil Tiger light aircraft bombed a Sri Lankan military position in the north of the island on Sunday in the rebels' first air raid in nearly six months, the military said. It also said that in ground fighting, 48 people died, most of them rebels. "At about 1:35 a.m. (1905 GMT Saturday) they came and dropped three bombs on the Welioya Forward Defence line. Nobody was hurt and no damage to any property," a military spokesman said of the rebel air raid on the northern district of Polonnaruwa. The rebels' last air strike was in October on an air force base in Anuradhapura. The military said fresh confrontations with the rebels had killed 28 Tamil Tiger rebels, and seven soldiers had died and one was missing in fighting in Welioya on Saturday. It also said fighting in northern districts of Jaffna, Vavuniya and Mannar on Saturday killed 13 Tamil Tiger rebels. Pro-Tamil Tiger rebel web site www.tamilnet.com said heavy fighting erupted in the Welioya area, pitting the Tigers against a "large-scale offensive" by the army. A suspected rebel bomb blast on a bus near the capital Colombo in the evening rush hour killed 26 people on Friday. Dozens of rebel fighters and government troops were killed this week in fighting on the Jaffna Peninsula in the far north. After driving the rebels from the east, the armed forces are focusing on Tiger-held areas in north, intensifying fighting in the war that has killed an estimated 70,000 people since 1983. While the military has the upper hand in the latest phase of the war, analysts see no clear final winner. |
| Posted by:Fred |