Lanka troops find remains of at least 15 rebels

Colombo, July 7: Sri Lankan troops found the remains of at least 15 Tamil Tiger rebels in the island's east today, a day after attacking two tractors carrying insurgents, the military said.

Yesterday's attack in jungle called Thoppigala in the eastern district of Batticaloa occurred just before nightfall, so troops had been unable to confirm how many rebels they had killed. The deaths take Friday's death toll to 18 Tigers and six troops.

Military spokesman Brigadier Prasad Samarasinghe said the toll could be higher.

''They have found the remains of 15 dead Tigers, but some of the bodies are in pieces ... so there could be more.'' In separate incidents yesterday, soldiers killed two rebels in the northern district of Vavuniya, and another near defence lines nearby, while six soldiers were killed by rebel mortar bomb fire in the east, Samarasinghe said.

The Tigers, who control a large section of the island's far north and are fighting for an independent state in north and east Sri Lanka, were not immediately available for comment.

The fighting comes after a raft of land and sea battles, ambushes and killings.

The military has captured vast swathes of territory from the Tigers in the east in recent months, and forecasts it will soon have driven them out of the east altogether once it has captured Thoppigala, where insurgents are hemmed into ever-decreasing pockets of jungle.

The government aims to hold long-delayed local elections in the east once the Tigers have been evicted altogether, in a bid to cement a civil administration and so hamper any future rebel efforts to recapture the territory.

Officials say President Mahinda Rajapaksa wants to hold the elections by the end of the year, but have cautioned they will take several months to organise once the Thoppigala has completely fallen.

However, while the Tigers have lost land in the east, historically territory has often changed hands, and analysts see no winner on the horizon for a conflict that has killed nearly 70,000 people since 1983.

REUTERS

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