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Tamil rebels set to take Jaffna, Military's supply line under threat |
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May 19, 2000
NEW DELHI, MAY 18 (AP) - Sri Lanka's Tamil Tiger rebels Thursday said they now have control over two strategic roads leading into Jaffna and are pounding the military's only airport in the region to cut off supplies for 40,000 troops defending the northern Jaffna peninsula.
At least 102 soldiers have died in the past 24 hours, the Voice of Tigers radio, monitored in the northern Sri Lankan town of Vavuniya, said. The government has admitted to only 24 wounded.
Fighting intensified Thursday as rebels from the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam fired between six to 10 artillery shells on the Palali airbase on a day when Sri Lankans celebrated the birth of Buddha with festivities.
If the airbase falls, the area's 40,000 troops and support staff will be trapped with nowhere to go.
Details of damages or casualties from the airport attack were not immediately known, but sources close to the rebels said one shell has fallen on a military hospital.
Military officials who spoke on condition of anonymity confirmed the attack on the airbase, but declined to give details.
It was the second time in two days that the airbase which also serves as a storage facility for the army, came under attack. The rebel radio said two Sri Lankan guards were killed in the attack Wednesday.
Earlier the rebels said they had captured a strategic military base outside Jaffna city and sections of two roads, killing at least 100 soldiers in a 12-hour battle.
The government denied that it has lost control of the roads, but admitted that the security forces had withdrawn their defenses from yet another area in the vicinity of Jaffna.
"Several attempts by the terrorists to advance...from Ariyalai area were contained by the security forces by readjusting the defended localities," said Ariya Rubasinghe, chief government spokesman and censor in a statement faxed to The Associated Press.
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