Sri Lankan troops hunt fleeing rebels in jungle

MANKERNI, Sri Lanka, Jan 20 (Reuters) Sri Lanka's army hunted Tamil Tigers in the jungle today as the rebels fled their eastern stronghold after weeks of fierce fighting.

Thousands of refugees arrived at crowded camps and some caught for weeks in the crossfire of artillery battles told how the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) had used them as cover, forcing them to stay put while the rebels retreated.

''The LTTE did not allow us to move. They threatened us,'' said 45-year-old field worker Thambdemuthu Kulasekaran who, with his seven children, wife and disabled mother, were among more than 10,000 who fled to government territory yesterday.

''There was so much shelling, so we moved to the south to here,'' he said at an army checkpoint in the town of Mankerni, near what used to be the front line in the conflict. ''I left all my belongings behind. The last meal I had was the day before yesterday.'' Hundreds of refugees, many of them young and elderly, were packed into buses with the few belongings they had salvaged to be moved further south to camps near the town of Batticaloa as troops searched for mines and booby-traps they say the Tigers left in their wake.

Tractors filled with displaced people, some clutching bags of clothes and even bicycles, trundled along the main road to Batticaloa as night fell.

Between 20,000 and 25,000 refugees had already fled the rebel enclave in recent weeks and were now housed in rudimentary tent cities similar to those many of them occupied after the 2004 tsunami washed away their homes.

SUSPECTED INFILTRATORS The military, who checked refugees from head to toe in their search for suspected Tiger infiltrators, said 10 youths had surrendered and one had been arrested on suspicion of being a rebel as their sobbing parents, themselves refugees, protested.

Troops were still searching for withdrawing rebels fleeing inland to jungle areas after giving up the last remaining stretch of eastern seaboard they held under the terms of a battered 2002 ceasefire which now existed only on paper.

''They have withdrawn inland to small jungle areas. We now hold the whole coastline in the east,'' said military spokesman Brigadier Prasad Samarasinghe. ''They are burning their equipment, like artillery guns and generators, as they try to escape.'' ''They are fighting in small groups, with mortars and small arms fire,'' he added. ''We are checking the refugees to find any Tigers hiding among them.'' Yesterday's capture of Vakarai -- a town about 240 km northeast of Colombo that belongs to the rebels under the 2002 ceasefire -- followed weeks of fierce fighting between the Tigers and the military, who have vowed to drive them from the east altogether.

The area around Vakarai was one of several pockets of territory the rebels controlled in the region and their last direct access to the sea in the east, an important supply line.

The Tigers' patches of mostly jungle terrain in the east are cut off from their main northern stronghold by army-held areas.

The Tigers said overnight they had decided to readjust their positions and pull back, accusing the military of preventing aid from reaching civilians and causing a humanitarian crisis.

The Tigers were unavailable for comment today.

The LTTE resumed its fight for an independent state for minority Tamils in the north and east after the majority Sinhalese government rejected demands for a separate homeland.

REUTERS MS RK2010