Sri Lanka military chases routed tigers

Valachchenai, Sri Lanka, Jan 21: Sri Lankan troops chased small groups of fleeing Tamil Tigers today after routing an eastern stronghold held by the rebels for 11 years, but the military said some fighters were escaping.

At least four rebels were killed in a clash as they tried to cross an army-held highway in the Batticaloa district and reach a pocket of jungle the Tigers control further south.

Troops found 18 T-56 rifles along with the bodies as well as other military hardware, suggesting many other fleeing Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) fighters fleeing the enclave had managed to get away.

''Some are trying to escape, some are managing to escape. The security forces are trying to capture them,'' said military spokesman Brigadier Prasad Samarasinghe. ''In small numbers they will have crossed towards Toppigala,'' he added referring to a swathe of rebel-held jungle inland.

''They are crossing the road from north to south. We can't cover all the routes because there are so many kilometres (of road to defend),'' he added, saying the army believed small clusters of rebels also fled in the days running up to the enclave's fall on Friday.

The military said it was clearing fields of landmines laid by the Tigers and aimed to resettle civilians in the newly captured area as soon as possible.

But with the Tigers evicted from their eastern stronghold -- which belongs to them under the terms of a now tattered 2002 truce which holds only on paper -- and the government vowing to evict them from the east altogether, many fear fighting could spread elsewhere.

TIGERS DEFIANT

The captured coastal stretch spanning the districts of Trincomalee and Batticaloa around 240 km northeast of Colombo was an important maritime supply line for the Tigers and is a major strategic loss.

The Tigers remain defiant.

''The location (of our fighters) may have changed, but we still have our fighting capacity,'' Tiger military spokesman Rasiah Ilanthiraiyan said by telephone from the northern stronghold of Kilinochchi.

''It doesn't mean the LTTE has gone nil in Trincomalee,'' he added, refusing to comment further.

As the Tigers fled, so too did more than 10,000 refugees trapped for weeks in artillery crossfire.

They joined tens of thousands more who managed to escape in recent weeks by trekking through jungle, swimming across lagoons and by sea and now live in crowded emergency camps in Batticaloa.

Many have been housed in schools, with classrooms becoming makeshift homes for dozens of families as an interim measure.

''The new internally displaced will be accommodated in existing emergency camps,'' said Martin de Boer, head of the Red Cross mission in Batticaloa. ''People are building water suuplies, toilets and shelter. They are being given meals and their basic needs can be met.'' The United Nations estimates that more than 210,000 people have been displaced by the latest chapter in the island's two-decade civil war over the past nine months, with more than 500,000 in total currently displaced across the island due to war past and present and the 2004 tsunami.

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

With a rash of suicide bombings, air raids and land and sea battles in recent months, analysts fear escalation of a conflict that has killed more than 67,000 people since 1983.

REUTERS

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