COLOMBO, March 23: Sri Lankan troops advanced into territory held by Tamil Tiger rebels on Friday, shifting the battle lines to the island's north where the latest death toll on both sides hit 37, the military said.
Heavily armed soldiers “neutralised” a threat from the Tiger guerillas on the de facto border with rebel-held territory in the northwestern coastal district of Mannar, defence ministry spokesman Prasad Samarasinghe said.
“What we have done is to neutralise the threat to our positions,” Samarasinghe said. “We have not captured territory.” Military sources said that four soldiers and 20 guerillas were killed in fresh fighting on Friday morning while security forces said they killed 11 more rebels in the same area on Thursday.
At least 19 soldiers were also wounded when the Tigers fired mortars and resisted the military push, military sources said.
Another two Tigers were reported killed further north in the Jaffna peninsula where sporadic fire fights raged on Friday, the military said.
The heavy fighting forced the closure of the de facto border crossing point at Omanthai, local officials said.
Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) spokesman Rasiah Ilanthiriyan said those killed on Thursday were not Tamil Tigers, but he had no information about fighting on Friday morning.
“It is possible that they killed some civilians using Claymore mines,” Ilanthiriyan said.
But Ilanthiriyan confirmed the advance, saying the military had captured a village in the rebel-held part of Mannar district.
“The Sri Lankan army has captured the Thampane village and is holding 130 villagers hostage,” he said by telephone from his base in Kilinochchi, 330 kilometres north of here.
Samarasinghe denied that they were holding civilians and in turn accused the Tigers of using villagers as a human shield to attack government forces.
“They have camps near villages and fire at us from those locations knowing that we will not fire back because of the civilians in the area,” the defence ministry spokesman said.
More than 4,000 people have been killed in a new wave of fighting in Sri Lanka since December 2005. The violence comes despite a truce in place since February 2002.
The latest violence came as troops carried out clearing operations in the east of the island after simultaneous Tamil Tiger attacks left at least 20 people dead and dozens more wounded on Wednesday, officials said.
The Tigers said they launched the attacks to prevent the military from starting a fresh offensive on the rebel-held Thoppigala jungles in Batticaloa district.
Security forces were firing rockets towards the jungles, which the guerrillas use as a springboard to launch hit-and-run attacks in Batticaloa.
Official figures show that nearly 150,000 people were listed as internally displaced in Batticaloa since the military captured a key Tiger base there in January.—AFP