LTTE triggers 'humanitarian catastrophe': blasts off Kalamadukulam Tank bund - Mullaittivu

Defence.lk Video.


ITN Evening News (24-09-2009)



LTTE terrorists have blasted off the Kalamadukulam Tank bund this morning (Jan 24) in a desperate attempt to stall the multi-frontal military surge towards Visuamadu area, latest reports from the Mullaittivu battlefront said. "This is totally an inhuman act with least respect to the lives of innocent Tamil civilians entrapped in the area", a defence official said while urging worldwide condemnation for the terrorist act.

Terrorists have used high explosives and triggered the detonation flooding a section of the A-35 Pranthan - Mullaittivu main road, Ramanatpuram, Dharmapuram and Visuamadu. LTTE terrorists had resorted to this cheap tactic after suffering heavy beating by the security forces during intense fighting that erupted since Friday (23), Northeast of Kalamadu and Nethiliaru, security sources said. Terrorist resistances were beaten comprehensively in the ground battles, which left its fighting formations in total disarray, security sources said.

According to defence observers, the floods will also worsen the LTTE orchestrated humanitarian crisis at Mullaittivu with hundreds confined to small land patches and deprived of relief or aid supplies. Earlier, LTTE terrorists made a similar attempt to destroy the Iranamadu Tank bund to dismantle the multi-pronged military advance during the battle for Kilinochchi.

Kalamadukulam Tank spreads over 4.5sq.km. with a capacity of supplementing irrigation water to over 500 acres of land. "Not only LTTE had created a humanitarian catastrophe but have also shown their utmost contempt of the very people once they said to 'represent'," defence observers further stated.

Malaysia orders a countrywide alert on fleeing tiger supremo Prabhakaran.

Malaysian Inspector General of Police Musa Hassan told Kula Lumpur's Strait Times that he has ordered a country wide alert to be on the watch out for Tamil Tiger leader Velupillai Prabhakaran.

The alert was issued on the suspicion that he may have escaped to Malaysia after Sri Lankan troops surrounded his last stronghold, Mulaitivu in a 50,000 strong force.

The Malaysian Police Chief told the newspaper that there was a suspicion that Prabhakaran might have escaped to Malaysia or the neighbouring Thailand.

There is a strong Sri Lankan Tamil minority in Malaysia and it is alleged that a strongly pro-LTTE politician in India has been maintaining coordinating activities between the rebel outfit and the Malaysian Tamils.

"We are also using our local intelligence network to ascertain if he is already in the country," Musa was quoted as saying to the Strait Times. "My men will be monitoring all entry points into the country to ensure he does not enter the country," he added.

There had been many speculations in the press about the whereabouts of Prabhakaran after Lieutenant General Sarath Fonseka, the Commander of the Sri Lanka Army , last Saturday said, that Prabhakaran might have already escaped Mulaitivu. He has said that the only possible withdrawal of the Tigers could be to the sea in reply to a supporting politician of the Tamil Tigers that they had withdrawn as a tactical strategy to Mulaitivu.

Military analysts have predicted that all camps of the Tigers could be overrun within the matter of few weeks by the Sri Lanka forces.

Walter Jayawardhana

Sri Lanka forces capture Elephant Pass...

Sri Lankan troops on Friday captured Elephant Pass, the Tamil Tigers' last stronghold on the Jaffna peninsula, seizing control of a base and a symbolic highway, and isolating the retreating rebels in a shrinking slice of northeastern jungle.

The victory at Elephant Pass came exactly a week after the military seized the Tamil Tigers' administrative capital of Kilinochchi and began racing deep into rebel-held territory.

Concerns meanwhile rose about potential civilian casualties.

The government has vowed to crush the separatist guerrillas and end the Indian Ocean island nation's quarter-century-old civil war in the coming months.

The capture of Elephant Pass gives the government nearly full control of the northern peninsula — the Tamil's cultural capital and the symbolic heart of the insurgency — for the first time in nine years. The rebels still control a small sliver of land in the east of the peninsula.

It also puts the A-9 road, Sri Lanka's major north-south highway and a powerful symbol of national unity, completely under government control for the first time in 23 years. The road will allow the government to easily send supplies over land to the once isolated enclave of Jaffna, which it had been forced to resupply by air and sea.

The road will also serve as a supply line for government forces laying siege to the rebels' last remaining stronghold of Mullaittivu.

However, that fighting will be especially difficult because of the presence of hundreds of thousands of civilians concentrated in the rebel area, said Iqbal Athas, a military analyst for Jane's Defense Weekly.

Human rights groups have warned that civilian casualties were likely to mount as the government closes in on the insurgents. The pro-rebel TamilNet Web site has blamed government artillery assaults for several civilian deaths in recent days — charges the military has denied.

"It's going to be the final part that's the toughest part for the military," Athas said.

"The soldiers today are waging a battle to give the people a country free of terrorism," President Mahinda Rajapaksa said in announcing the victory on national television.

The rebels were not available for comment.

But, in a reminder of the Tamil Tigers' ability to strike back in the face of conventional defeats, the rebels detonated a roadside bomb near the eastern city of Trincomalee that killed three air force troops and four civilians, military spokesman Brig. Udaya Nanayakkara said.

The government captured the east from the rebels in 2007, but attacks in the area have increased in recent months.

The Tamil Tigers have been fighting since 1983 to create an independent homeland for ethnic minority Tamils, who have suffered decades of marginalization by governments controlled by the Sinhalese majority. The conflict has killed more than 70,000 people.

Before the recent military offensive, the rebels controlled a large swath of territory in the country's north that they ran as a de facto state, with their own courts, police and tax system.

That territory was sandwiched between the northern Jaffna peninsula — largely in government hands — and the rest of the country to the south.

But troops pushed in from the south in recent months, and captured an important crossroads last week that led to Elephant Pass on the rebel-controlled isthmus connecting the peninsula to the rest of the island.

As troops descended on the rebels there from the north and south, the insurgents had little choice but to withdraw many of their fighters and heavy weapons to Mullaittivu to the south, Athas said.

"They had to cede it otherwise they would have gotten trapped," Athas said.

On Friday, government forces broke into Elephant Pass from both sides and fought with the retreating rebels, Nanayakkara said.

"(The rebels) were just engaging and withdrawing," he said. "They did not have any fire support like artillery and mortars. They were fighting with small arms and booby trapping the area and moving out."

The Tamil Tigers seized control of Elephant Pass in 2000 in a battle that left more than 700 soldiers dead or missing, but many doubt the rebels have the capability to repeat such a feat.

The victory at Elephant Pass gave the government new momentum by linking up troops who had been stationed along the relatively static northern front lines with the forces chasing the rebels from the south and west, Athas said. That frees up thousands of troops to join the battle, he said...


capturing of Elephant Pass as reported by international media

Hindustan Times

Times of india.

Reuters.

BBC

New York Times.

Asian tribune

Roopawaahini Evening News.January 06, 2009(War situation Report)


Swarnawahini News 06/01/2009(Awasan Satana)

Kilinochchi liberated- Countdown to extinction begins for LTTE

The 57 Division and the Task Force 1 of Sri Lanka Army today (Jan 2) scored the greatest victory in their noble battle against terrorism by liberating the Kilinochchi town, the so-called administrative hub of the LTTE terrorists.

Troops of 57 Division lead by Major General Jagath Dias have entered into the highly defended terrorists stronghold from the South and Southwestern boundaries while the Task Force 1 troops lead by Brigadier Shavendra Silva have marched in from the North and Northwest.

Kilinochchi, though not very strategically located in terms of military maneuvers, has been given a great symbolic importance by the LTTE terrorists as their administrative "capital". In fact, the LTTE propaganda elements used to call the town as their de facto capital of the utopian state of "Eelam". However , Sri Lanka government has been running all civil administrative affairs in the area, including bank and finance, education, health, trade and welfare .

The terrorist first took hold of the town in 1990 when the Army withdrew its garrisons from Kilinochchi. Then the area was liberated by the Army during operations Sathjaya I, II, and III in September 1996. The town again fell into the terrorists' hand in September 1998 and had their administrative hub there ever since.

The LTTE is a ruthless terrorists outfit that has been engaged in a bloody terrorist campaign against the citizens of Sri Lanka since 1983. Lead by a psychopathic chief , the outfit has been trying to establish an ethnically pure Tamil state on the Sri Lankan soil. The LTTE is also the first terrorist outfit to use suicide bombers, and to develop naval and aerial fighting capability. The outfit is listed in the UN list of shame for using child soldiers and banned in many countries in the world.