Sri Lankan military says 3 Tamil Tiger rebels bases captured in north

Associated Press, Thu March 8, 2007 23:30 EST . DILIP GANGULY

Associated Press Writer

COLOMBO, Sri Lanka (AP) _ Sri Lankan ground troops, backed by artillery, captured three Tamil Tiger bases in the northeastern Trincomalee District in an overnight military operation that stretched into Friday morning, the Defense Ministry said.

``We have forced the terrorists to flee from the these three bases,'' military spokesman Brig. Prasad Samarasinghe said. There were between 100 to 150 rebels in the bases, Samarasinghe said. ``They have suffered heavy casualties,'' Samarasinghe said, but did not provide a figure.

Trincomalee has a strategic port and serves as a base for the Sri Lankan navy and a major sea supply route to 40,000 Sri Lankan troops stationed in the Jaffna peninsula. The rebels bases were located in areas that could threaten the road supply routes to the port.

The rebels, formally known as Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam, tacitly acknowledged that Sri Lankan troops had taken over the bases.

``We had hundreds of bases in that area, many were closed years back, some were closed recently,'' Rasiah Ilanthirayan, the rebel spokesman, said from the insurgents' headquarters in Kilinochchi.

``It is a matter of walking into vacated places,'' Ilanthirayan said, suggesting that the bases were empty when Sri Lankan troops reached them.

``They are beating around the bush without reaching our core area,'' he said of the rebels' strongholds in the jungles and areas in the north where the army has yet to start operation.

But military spokesman Samarasinghe rejected the suggestion that the rebel bases had been vacated long ago.

``We have found items of day-to-day use,'' he said, adding that the rebels had evacuated their casualties along with weapons.

The new military offensive coincided with reports that thousands of villagers were fleeing from rebel-held areas in the east, fearing new fighting between the guerrillas and government troops.

At least 13,685 Tamil refugees have crossed into government-held territory from rebel-controlled areas in the past two weeks in Batticaloa District, Samarasinghe said.

On Wednesday, 3,638 people fled rebel areas, the most in a single day, he said.

The refugees fear their villages will become battlegrounds, as fighting between the military and the Tamil Tigers intensifies.

About 4,000 people have died in escalating violence in Sri Lanka since late 2005, when a Norwegian-brokered 2002 cease-fire faltered, European cease-fire monitors say. About 65,000 people were killed before the truce was signed.

The rebels have been fighting since 1983 to create a separate state in the north and northeast for the country's ethnic Tamil minority, following decades of discrimination by the Sinhalese majority