Sri Lanka Says Fighter Jets Destroy Tamil Tiger Naval HQ
Dated 4/4/2007
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Sri Lankan air force jets bombed and destroyed the headquarters of the Tamil Tigers' naval arm in the far northern district of Mullaithivu, the military said on Wednesday, but the rebels said a landmine victim charity was hit.
As the headquarters were inland in a town called Puthukkudiyiruppu, and the feared Sea Tiger fleet of attack boats are stationed near the coast, it was unclear if any rebel vessels were damaged, the military said.
The Tigers said two civilians were killed by the air strike, but there was no independent confirmation of what was hit.
"We took one target today. It was the Sea Tigers' headquarters, a fuel dump and vehicle parking area -- all completely destroyed," air force spokesman Group Captain Ajantha de Silva said. "Right now the base is (on) fire."
He said the air strike had also hit munitions stores.
The Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) denied they have a Sea Tiger headquarters building in Puthukkudiyiruppu, saying the bombs had damaged, but not destroyed, the office of White Pigeon, a local charity which makes prosthetic limbs for landmine victims.
No staff members were killed, they said.
"It's not a headquarters. It's a White Pigeon office that is damaged," Tiger humanitarian issues spokeswoman N. Selvy said from the rebels' northern stronghold of Kilinochchi.
"There is no Sea Tiger building in the area where the attack took place. It is entirely a civilian area," she added. "Two civilians were killed and four were injured in the aerial attack."
DAILY CLASHES
The attack comes amid a rash of near daily land and sea confrontations as a new chapter in the two-decade civil war escalates.
More than 50 people have been killed since the weekend, including mostly civilians when 16 died in a bomb attack on a bus in the east blamed on the rebels -- and more than 4,000 troops, civilians and rebels have been killed in the past 15 months alone.
The air raid also comes after the Tigers launched their first-ever air strike on an air base next to the island's international airport north of the capital Colombo last week, which analysts say has added a deadly new dynamic to the protracted conflict.
President Mahinda Rajapaksa's majority-Sinhalese government is pushing on with a declared plan to destroy all Tiger military assets, while the Tigers have vowed to fight on for an independent state for minority Tamils in the north and east and have warned of a bloodbath.
Indian Foreign Minister Pranab Mukherjee on Wednesday urged Sri Lanka's government to pursue a political solution rather than a military one.
"We believe to resolve the problem they must also engage in the peace process which was initiated, as a military solution ultimately would not yield results," he told a news conference at the end of a South Asian regional summit in New Delhi.
A former top rebel commander, who analysts say is allied to the government and helping the military to fight the Tigers, has claimed the mainstream group only signed up to a truce in 2002 to buy time and rearm for more war.
Colonel Karuna, who broke away from the mainstream Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) in 2004 and has since formed a political party that aims to run the island's restive east, told the BBC that reclusive Tiger leader Velupillai Prabhakaran was never sincere about peace talks.
"What we were told by him was 'to drag these talks out for about 5 years, somehow let the time pass by, meanwhile I will purchase arms and we'll be ready for the next stage of fighting'," Karuna said at an undisclosed location in the east.
"That was his order."
Analysts say a war that has killed around 68,000 troops, rebels and civilians since 1983 is escalating, but say the Tigers' retain their strike capability despite a series of battlefield losses and see no clear winner on the horizon.