Sri Lanka bomb rebel camp, clash kill one

Colombo, July 14: Sri Lanka fighter jets bombed a Tamil Tiger camp in the island's northwest hours after a soldier was killed in a clash in the far north which left many rebel casualties, the military said today.

The bombing of the Tiger position in the district of Mannar came three days after the government declared it had driven the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) from their last jungle stronghold in the east after months of fighting.

''We bombed the LTTE camp in Mannar and it was very successful, lot of casualties,'' Air Force spokesman Group Captain Ajantha De Silva told Reuters.

The air raids came hours after the Tigers killed one soldier and injured 11 in the northern district of Vavuniya, which borders rebel territory. ''The LTTE were firing mortars and artillery and we confronted them ... there are a lot of LTTE casualties,'' military spokesman Brigadier Prasad Samarasinghe told Reuters.

''We also had one soldier killed and 11 injured,'' he said.

Sri Lanka has been gripped by renewed civil war since the collapse last year of a ceasefire agreed in 2002. An estimated 4,500 people have been killed since then.

The rebels, fighting for an independent homeland in the north and east of the island, said on Thursday their aim was to cripple the Sri Lankan economy with major attacks on military and economic targets.

Tiger political wing leader SP Thamilsel van told Reuters in an interview that peace was ''not possible'' as long as Mahinda Rajapaksa remained president, pouring cold water on international efforts to halt the two-decade conflict.

The military has captured vast swathes of territory from the Tigers in the east in recent months, and now fighting is focused in the north, but analysts say they see no winner on the horizon.

The conflict has killed nearly 70,000 people since 1983.

Reuters

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