Sri Lanka battles rebels as Japan envoy visits

Colombo, June 7: Sri Lankan soldiers battled Tamil Tiger rebels in jungles in the island's restive east today, the military said, as Japan's special peace envoy visited camps for war-displaced families in the area.

Military spokesman Brigadier Prasad Samarasinghe said the army killed five insurgents overnight in a jungle area called Thoppigala in the eastern district of Batticaloa, and that fighting continued today.

''We are continuing with our operation in Thoppigala and neutralising their positions,'' Samarasinghe said. He said four soldiers were injured during Wednesday's clash, the latest in a series of land and sea battles amid renewed civil war.

Tens of thousands of civilians have been living in dusty refugee camps in Batticaloa for months, and many lose sleep at daily barrages of mortar bombs and artillery shells that boom in the distance.

Japanese envoy Yasushi Akashi, who is on a 5-day visit to try and find ways to salvage a battered peace process visited an elite police commando base and camps housing internally displaced on Thursday, an aide said.

The camps are located far away from the jungles where the fighting is taking place.

Akashi was also due to visit the former rebel stronghold of Vakarai further north, which troops captured in January along with a vast swathe of eastern territory the rebels controlled under the terms of a tattered 2002 truce which now holds only on paper. The government has resettled around 15,000 people in and around Vakarai.

His visit coincides with the funeral of two Tamil volunteers of the Sri Lanka Red Cross, who were taken away by men who identified themselves as policemen from a Colombo train station on Friday.

Their corpses were found dumped outside the capital two days later.

Japan has played down expectations of any breakthrough from the visit, but says the envoy will try to push forward an initiative to create a devolution proposal to end a conflict that has killed nearly 70,000 people since 1983.

Reuters

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