Colombo: The Sri Lankan Army Chief has rubbished suggestions that the LTTE has made "strategic" retreat from its strongholds, stressing that the "fighting machine" of the Tamil Tigers is now "constrained".
"No fighting force like the LTTE has ever withdrawn from 95 percent of the land mass it occupied as a strategic move," Sarath Fonseka said.
The Army chief underlined that the LTTE not only lost 95 percent of the land it held but also lost within the last one year 8,000 cadres out of whom the Sri Lanka military was aware of the identity of 4,000.
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The LTTE "fighting machine" is constrained to a triangular area in two sides of which are about 40 kilometers each in the Mullaittivu area roughly, Fonseka told the state-owned Independent Television Network (ITN).
"It is a clear defeat where they lose at least one square kilometer daily until they are flushed out finally in a short period of time. Every day the army also discovered 5 to 7 corpses of the LTTE at the war front," the army commander was quoted as saying by the Defence Ministry website.
Tamil Tigers, now virtually on the run, have claimed that they still retained the capability to seize back LTTE's de-facto capital of Killinochchi.
Emerging after the devastating defeat at the hands of Lankan Army, LTTE political chief B Nadesan said "Kilinochchi town was captured more than once by the Sri Lanka military earlier."
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"Similarly, we have also re-captured the town on earlier occasions, effectively bringing the town under our control to serve the administrative and infrastructure needs," Nadesan was quoted by pro-LTTE website Tamilnet.
Army chief Fonseka stressed that the LTTE took advantage of the ceasefire period to raise its fighter force by over four times besides enhancing its weapon power during the period.
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