Lankan forces capture strategic area in LTTE stronghold

by Sanjay Jha | November 7, 2008 at 12:51 am

193 views | 0 Recommendations | 0 comments

The Sri Lankan forces have intensified their campaign against rebel LTTE in last months. The government troops have made dramatic progress on the northern fronts, seizing a series of rebel bases and chunks of land, but the rebels have offered stiff resistance to advancing troops.Sri Lankan government have already captured eastern parts from the clutches
of the Tamil rebels.

Thousands of people have been killed in the ongoing conflict between Tamil rebels LTTE. The Tamil Tigers have fought since 1983 to create an independent homeland for ethnic minority Tamils, who have suffered marginalization at the hands of successive governments controlled by ethnic Sinhalese.

The new fighting came as soldiers closed in on the rebels' administrative capital of Kilinochchi in a campaign aimed at routing the guerrillas and ending a 25-year-old war that has killed more than 70,000 people.

Sri Lankan Amry on Thursday captured a strategic area in the rebel stronghold of Kilinochchi following three days of intense fighting and attacked LTTE bunkers elsewhere in the embattled north of the country, the Defence Ministry said.

The attack at Kilinochchis strategic Akkarayankulam forward lines was undertaken by troops attached to the Sri Lanka Light Infantry (SLLI), Sri Lanka Sinha Regiment (SLSR) and the Gajaba Regiment (GR) in the 571 Brigade under 57 Division, it said.

"After fighting bitter battles with the Tigers for three consecutive day and night, the army finally captured the entire Akkarayankulam built-up territory that houses the Akkarayan base hospital, school, maternity home, a post office, Teachers Quarters, Bazaar buildings and basically everything by this morning," the army said.

Most of the LTTE fighters were said to be minors or teenagers, the army said quoting ground troops.

In the other LTTE stronghold of Mullaittivu, troops said they killed two LTTE cadres during a confrontation in Terumurikandy yesterday. The territory is located south of the crucial LTTE area of Iranamadu.

Enthused with the success in the Tamil ares the Sri Lankan military wants to continue its offensive. The Sri Lankan government has vowed to wipe out the Tamil Tigers by the end of the year. President Mahinda Rajapakse has proposed for a hike in the defense spending. He says is more fund is needed to to ramp up their offensive against northern ethnic Tamil Tiger rebels.

P { MARGIN: 0px 0px 5px } BODY { MARGIN: 0px }

Sri Lanka's president sought approval for the country's largest-ever defence budget from Parliament yesterday as government forces captured a key village from Tamil Tiger rebel control in the north.

The Tamil National Alliance party — with 22 ethnic Tamil lawmakers in the country's 225-member Parliament — walked out of the chamber during President Mahinda Rajapakse's speech, protesting that Tamil civilians were being targeted in the government's military campaign.

Rajapakse, who also serves as defence and finance minister, proposed to spend 177bn rupees ($1.6bn) on defence for 2009, an increase of 6.4 percent from 166.4bn rupees ($1.5bn) allocated this year.

Latest report says that heavy fighting broke out in Sri Lanka’s north as Tamil Tigers gave fierce resistance to government troops trying to reach a highway that cuts across rebel territory. The ministry of defence said long hours of fighting Thursday close to Panikkankulam left scores of Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) cadres dead. Many guerrillas were also reported missing.

0 See all footage | View Slideshow

Share: email story | add to any | Digg | facebook | stumbleupon