Sri Lanka battle rebels as displaced flee to safety

Trincomalee, Aug 5: Tamil Tigers and troops exchanged mortar and artillery fire today in the 11th day of fighting in Sri Lanka's restive east, as the military sought to move thousands of displaced civilians out of harm's way.

At daybreak, the army fired volleys from multi-barrel rocket launchers at Tiger positions near the ravaged town of Mutur, from which thousands of people fled yesterday and where pockets of rebels are still holding out.

The military said Tigers fired mortar bombs before dawn at an Air Force base further south, in the district of Batticaloa, but that troops retaliated and the rebels were driven back.

The Navy said it believed it killed around 150 Tigers during a battle for control of a jetty in Mutur yesterday, but analysts say the foes vastly inflate enemy death tolls as a propaganda war rages.

''Whenever they fire mortars, we fire artillery and mortars back,'' said military spokesman Major Upali Rajapakse. ''Our control of Mutur town has become much better than yesterday.'' He said troops were still clearing newly laid landmines from around a sluice gate the government accuses the rebels of blocking to choke the flow of water to majority Sinhalese farmers, which sparked the fighting in the first place.

Aid workers said around 7,000 of an estimated 20,000-30,000 people, mostly Muslims, from Mutur had arrived at the government-held town of Kantale around 30 km south west.

The military put the overall figure of displaced at around 11,000-15,000, and said several thousand stragglers would be brought to the town today.

Military sources said they had heard reports that Tigers had killed 17 fleeing civilians yesterday, but there was no official confirmation.

The fighting is the most intense and prolonged since a 2002 ceasefire, although diplomats and analysts say the paper truce is dead on the ground and that a two-decade civil war that has killed more than 65,000 people since 1983 has resumed.

The government insists it is committed to the ceasefire.

''The government can play with semantics, but it's hard to see what's going on as anything but a war,'' said a western diplomat.

Well over 800 people have been killed so far this year in escalating attacks and military clashes. The Tigers are furious at President Mahinda Rajapakse's rejection of their demand for a separate homeland for ethnic Tamils in the north and east.

Visiting Norwegian special peace envoy Jon Hanssen-Bauer headed to the island's northern army-held Jaffna peninsula to meet civic leaders, and is due to meet the Tigers' political leadership in their northern base of Kilinochchi tomorrow.

However his visit is to discuss the future of Nordic truce monitors after European Union member nations decided to pull staff out in the face of a rebel ultimatum, and analysts say any return to peace talks is a dim and distant prospect.

Reuters

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