COLOMBO, Oct 6: Heavy sea and land battles erupted on Friday in Sri Lanka with the military reporting the recovery of 22 bodies of Tamil rebels after a Norwegian envoy failed to broker a deal for re-launching peace talks.
The military and the rebels accused each other of sparking the fighting which came as peace broker Norway struggled to arrange a face-to-face meeting between the parties and prevent the island from sliding back to full-scale war.
The defence ministry said government forces repulsed a major Tamil separatist offensive against defence lines in Mankerni in the coastal district of Batticaloa.
However, the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) denied launching any offensive and in turn accused the military of starting a push into guerrilla territory.
“Sri Lankan troops are advancing into our territory and they have moved about one and a half kilometres,” LTTE spokesman Rasiah Ilanthiriyan said on telephone from the rebel-held northern town of Kilinochchi.
He said he had no immediate details of the casualties, but added that the LTTE had already lodged protests with peace broker Norway and complained to the Scandinavian truce monitors.
“Our defence council is going to take a decision on this situation,” he said.
The defence ministry said ground forces in the northern peninsula of Jaffna had also on Friday destroyed a rebel fuel depot located at a small islet off the northern mainland.
Ground troops were assisted by naval fast attack craft and gun boats to destroy a newly built rebel bunker line in the coastal Upparu area, the ministry said.
It said fighting in the eastern region was sparked by the Tigers.
“We have recovered the bodies of 22 Tiger cadres and they may have suffered more casualties,” a military official in the east said by telephone. “We have about five soldiers seriously wounded.”
The flare-up came a day after Norway’s peace envoy, Jon Hanssen-Bauer, left the island after failing to seal an agreement on a venue to resume peace negotiations between the two sides.
However, the government did announce it was “accommodating” the LTTE to advance the suggested date for talks to Oct 28.
Israeli-built Kfir jets hit suspected Tiger locations at Kathiraveli, just north of the Mankerni army defences in the Batticaloa district, on Thursday night, the defence ministry said.
International aid agencies, meanwhile, asked both the Tigers and the government to allow access for aid agencies to deliver urgently needed supplies to some 200,000 directly affected by the ongoing hostilities.—AFP
