The Ceylon News

Sri lanka's military has made significant advances in the north and east in recent months [E Sri Lankan troops have entered the last town held by Tamil Tiger separatists, a government spokesman says. "Troops of the 59th division entered Mullaittivu town a short while ago and we hope they will consolidate their hold across the town in a few hours," Keheliya Rambukwella, the governement spokesman, said on Sunday. Brigadier Udaya Nanayakkara, a Sri Lankan military spokesman, said that the fighting around Mullaittivu was heavy. "Troops are negotiating pockets of fighting here and there," he said. It was not possible to independently verify the government's claims, as journalists are banned from the war zone. The military says it has made dramatic gains in recent months, pushing the Tamil Tigers, who are fighting for an independent homeland in the north and east of the island, back to a small area in the east of the country. Ominous "It does sound ominous for the Tamil Tigers, but you have say, put in this context, perhaps Mullaittivu was not going to be the last resting place for them," Al Jazeera's Tony Birtley, reporting from the capital Colombo, said. "It was always thought that they would flee to the jungles where they would have a much higher degree of safety and it would be harder to flush them out. "We don't know how strong the Tamil Tigers still are, how well armed they still are, but if there is a hardcore there they can still operate from the jungle and that could cause problems for the Sri Lanka government. "There is still the possibility and the concern that there may be some sort of counter-offensive launched soon." The rebels took control of Mullaittivu in 1996 when they overran a military camp there, killing nearly 1,000 soldiers. Dam destroyed On Sunday, the military said that the retreating rebels had flooded two villages after destroying a reservoir in an attempt to stall advancing government troops. Tamil Tiger fighters used explosives to destroy the walls of Kalmadukulam reservoir on Saturday, as government troops advanced on Visuamdu, in Mullaittivu district, a statement said. Details of the welfare of villagers and the damage caused by flooding from the dam were not immediately available. Soldiers also clashed with fighters in Chundikulam village in the same district and hours later recovered the bodies of two Tamil Tiger fighters, according to the statement. Civilians trapped As fighting has intensified, aid groups and diplomats have expressed fears for the safety of hundreds of thousands of civilians reportedly trapped in Tiger-held territory around Mullaittivu. The rebel-affiliated TamilNet website said that five civilians were killed on Friday and 83 wounded when the army fired artillery shells into a government-declared "safe zone" for displaced families. A doctor in the area confirmed on Saturday that five civilians were killed in shelling. The military denied firing into the civilian settlements and launching attacks on the "safe zone", accusing the Tigers of carrying out the assaults themselves to keep civilians out of the area. Human rights organisations have accused the rebels of using the civilians as human shields to block the government offensive.

The government has won a string of military victories in recent months

Sri Lankan troops have entered the last Tamil Tiger rebel stronghold of Mullaitivu in the north-east of the island, military sources say.

The town has not been captured and intense fighting is going on, the military spokesman told the BBC.

There has been no comment from the Tamil Tigers, who have suffered a series of reverses in recent months.

The government has vowed to crush the rebels, who have been fighting for a separate homeland for 25 years.

At least 70,000 people have been killed during the insurgency.

Stall tactics

A government spokesman said troops from the 59th division had entered Mullaitivu and that it was "a matter of time before they take full control of the area".

Tamil Tiger rebels blasted through the walls of a reservoir on Saturday in an attempt to stall the advancing troops, the military said.

There is no way of confirming any of the claims as independent journalists are barred from conflict zone.

The BBC's Anbarasan Ethirajan in Colombo says the fall of the last main town under the Tigers' control would deprive the group of a crucial military base.

The government has won a string of military victories in recent months, including the capture of the rebels' de facto capital of Kilinochchi, cornering the rebels into a tiny pocket of territory in the island's north-east.

Some officials have predicted the army will recapture the north from the Tamil Tigers in the coming weeks.

However, even with its strong advances, the rebels have shown on many occasions their capacity to fight a guerrilla war operating from secret jungle bases.

It is not clear what has happened to the residents of Mullaitivu.

Earlier this week the military said it had designated a safe zone for civilians as it pushed ahead with its offensive in the area.

But as the fighting intensifies, aid agencies have expressed growing concern for the safety of 250,000 civilians reportedly trapped inside the conflict zones.

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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 Paranthan - 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 the second largest in the embattled region spreads over 4.5sq.km. with a capacity of supplementing irrigation water to over 500 acres of land. The tank was at spill level due to the recent North East monsoon, area military sources said. "Not only LTTE had created a humanitarian catastrophe but have also shown their utmost contempt for the very people once they said to 'represent'," defence observers further stated.

Earlier, on 2006, security forces were drawn to take military action to save over 15,000 civilians who were deprived of their irrigation and drinking water by the LTTE. The LTTE terrorists closed the irrigation canal at Mavil Aru on 20th June, 2006, draining water supply to over 30,000 acres of land.

As a potent military offensive by the Sri Lankan government whittles away one of the world’s shrewdest and most well-armed ethnic separatist armies, the cost of war is mounting, press freedom is shriveling and the political endgame remains as elusive as ever.

Over the past several months, the army has trounced the feared Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam in the country’s north, wresting control of rebel bunkers, office buildings and airstrips. This month alone, it seized two vital landmarks: the rebels’ erstwhile administrative capital, called Kilinochchi, and the isthmus called Elephant Pass, which connects northern Jaffna Peninsula to the rest of the island. Their territory fast shrinking, the Tamil Tigers now appear to be cornered in and around their northeastern garrison town of Mullaitivu.

The military gains are the deepest encroachment into rebel territory in a decade, and the government of President Mahinda Rajapaksa has promised to quash the Tamil Tigers. But even if the government manages to crush the group militarily, it will still need to find a political solution to the grievances among the island’s Tamil minority, and it has yet to clearly define what that solution might look like.

Even some of the government’s backers say that once the conventional war ends, the insurgents will just return to their roots and become guerrilla fighters once more.

Amid the current fighting, international aid agencies have sounded the alarm about the fate of 230,000 civilians trapped behind the front line. The passage of aid convoys, which ferry food and medicines to people living in rebel-held areas, has been interrupted by the recent fighting. Ambulances are sometimes unable to cross the front line. Dead bodies are piling up in hospital morgues.

On Thursday came reports that the Sri Lankan military shelled a makeshift hospital inside rebel territory. A pro-rebel news portal, TamilNet (www.tamilnet.com), quoted a local health official as saying that 66 civilians had been killed in artillery and rocket attacks in the past three days, including one at a school that had been functioning as a hospital near Mullaitivu town.

There have been at least 11 Sri Lankan aerial attacks on or near hospitals inside the rebel-held areas between Dec. 15 and Jan. 15, according to a United Nations official who declined to be identified because he was not authorized to speak with the media.

The military denies that it is making civilians targets.

It is impossible to verify either side’s claims, because the government does not allow journalists access to the conflict areas, except on rare, carefully guided tours.

Civilians on the other side of the front line have few options. The rebels are accused of keeping them there as civilian shields. Those who have managed to slip out — an estimated 2,000 in recent weeks — are kept in army-guarded camps in government-controlled areas.

In a stinging rebuke, the United Nations on Thursday accused the Tamil Tigers, also known by their acronym, the L.T.T.E., of prohibiting staff members and their families from crossing the front line, calling it “a clear abrogation” of international law.

Separately, the United Nations this week leaned on both sides, urging the Tamil Tigers to let civilians leave the war zone and the Sri Lankan authorities to respect “international standards” in camps set up for those who do.

“After some time expect the L.T.T.E. to transit into an insurgency mode and mix guerrilla warfare and terrorism together,” said Ashok Kumar Mehta, a retired Indian Army general who was part of the ill-fated Indian peacekeeping mission in the late 1980s. “The absence of war is not peace.”

On Wednesday, a bomb strapped to a bicycle killed two and injured several more in the eastern town of Batticaloa. It signaled the Tamil Tigers’ ability to create mayhem even in areas from which they have been routed for nearly a year.

The government’s steady push into rebel lands has been accompanied by a dogged intolerance of critical reporting over the past two and a half years. Officials, including the defense secretary, Gotabaya Rajapaksa, a naturalized United States citizen, have accused journalists who write critically about military spending or strategy of being “traitors.” Several have fled the country.

Journalists have been beaten up, abducted and killed. One was hacked to death last May near his home in Jaffna. None of the cases have been solved.

Attacks on the press culminated earlier this month with the killing of Lasantha Wickramatunga, the editor of The Sunday Leader. His brother, Lal, the chairman of the newspaper, said he wrote to the local authorities requesting protection. He said he had not heard back.

According to the International Press Institute, 15 journalists have been killed in Sri Lanka since 2004.

The ruling party of the southern Indian state of Tamil Nadu threatened on Friday to pull out of India's federal coalition unless New Delhi pushes for a ceasefire in Sri Lanka.

"If giving up power will lead to the birth of Tamil Eelam, we shall only be too glad to do so," Tamil Nadu chief minister M Karunanidhi said in the state capital Chennai, referring to a Tamil homeland in Sri Lanka.

Karunanidhi's resolution said his party would consider quitting the government if India did not help secure a truce in the worsening conflict, in which Sri Lankan forces are close to wiping out the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE).

Passed by his Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam party (DMK), lawmakers from India's ruling Congress party and smaller pro-LTTE parties, the ultimatum gave no timeframe.

The Indian government would almost certainly be able to remain in power until federal elections due by May without the DMK and analysts say the party's threat to withdraw may be posturing ahead of the vote in the majority Tamil state.

It was the second such threat in four months.

The DMK withdrew its plan to pull out by late October after foreign minister Pranab Mukherjee flew to Chennai to discuss his talks with Sri Lanka's special envoy Basil Rajapakse.

Mukherjee at the time said there were limitations to India intervening in another country's affairs.

Sri Lanka's military has boxed the LTTE into an area of less than 400 square km (155 sq miles) after the most successful campaign so far in a 25-year war, and wants to deliver a final blow to the last rebel redoubt, the port of Mullaitivu.

Human chain protests were held in Tamil Nadu in recent months as Sri Lankan forces intensified their offensive.

Aid agencies have warned that about 230,000 refugees are trapped and at risk of being caught in the crossfire.

The main opposition All India Anna Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (AIADMK) and an allied party walked out before the DMK resolution was put to a vote. The AIADMK's deputy leader, O Panneerselvam, called it "a drama". (Writing by Matthias Williams; editing by Philippa Fletcher)

Sri Lanka's navy forced a fleeing Tamil Tiger plane to turn back in barrages of anti-aircraft fire amid growing speculation over the whereabouts of the separatist group's elusive leader, military sources said on Wednesday.

Also on Wednesday, the military set up a 32 square km (12 sq mile) safe zone between the frontline and Tiger-held areas, for what aid agencies say are 230,000 people trapped in the combat.

"We are not there because if we are, the Tigers won't let people come there. We will not fire artillery into that area," military spokesman Brigadier Udaya Nanayakkara said.

With a military onslaught shrinking the territory held by Tigers by the day, one of the biggest questions remaining is where leader Vellupillai Prabhakaran is hiding and how he might try to escape Sri Lanka.

The small plane -- one of three the military says the Tigers have in their tiny air wing -- was spotted flying out to sea from near the eastern port of Mullaittivu late on Tuesday. "The military had observed the aircraft coming from the north and after half an hour it was seen by an eastern naval patrol. They fired at it so it could not leave the country," a military source told Reuters on condition of anonymity.

Two other military sources confirmed the account to Reuters. All three said the current location of the airplane was unknown.

The air force would only say that observers briefly spotted what appeared to be an airplane's running lights.

"We had identified a light at very high altitude for some time in between Mullaittivu and Challai," Air force spokesman Wing Commander Janaka Nanayakkara said. "The evidence and altitude made it hard to make a decision about what it was."

The Tigers have carried out nine attacks with their fleet of Czech-made, single-engine planes, and so far Sri Lanka's air force jets have been unable to intercept them.

The jets are based far from the war zone near the capital Colombo, and the Tigers tend to fly their planes low enough to avoid radar.

BLOCKADE

Navy fast attack boats have set up a heavy blockade off the northeastern shoreline around Mullaittivu, the last major town the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) still hold, to keep Prabhakaran and other top Tiger commanders from fleeing.

Last week, the army's commander, Lieutenant-General Sarath Fonseka said Prabhakaran may have fled the island already and could be hiding somewhere in southeast Asia, where the Tigers have supporters and had run weapons-smuggling operations.

Local media reported intelligence intercepts indicated that foreign countries may be plotting to help him escape by submarine. The countries involved were not named and Reuters was unable to substantiate those reports.

Fonseka has said he hopes to finish the ground war by mid-April. The Tigers are now cornered in about 450 square km (175 sq miles) of the Indian Ocean island's northeastern jungles. Rights watchdogs say the Tigers will not let civilians leave the war zone and force them to fight or build defences. The LTTE denies that. Around 2,000 refugees have fled since last week.

Foreshadowing the kind of hit-and-run attacks many expect to continue even if the army routs the Tigers, two people were killed and 11 wounded in a blast on Wednesday in the formerly LTTE-held city of Batticaloa.

Police blamed the LTTE, who could not be reached for comment. (Writing by Bryson Hull; Editing by Sanjeev Miglani)

A breakaway Tamil Tiger rebel group now allied with the government will release the last 20 child soldiers it has in its ranks within two weeks, the group's leader said on Friday.

Under a deal struck with the U.N. children's agency UNICEF last year, the TMVP group led by ex-Tiger commander Vinayagamoorthi Muralitharan had agreed to let go all child soldiers.

On Friday, Muralitharan said the TMVP had freed 14 child soldiers and pledged to remove the rest quickly. They released 38 in April last year.

"There are about 20 left according to our records and we will release them within two weeks, then we will go and check whether there are any more," the man better known by his nom-de-guerre of Colonel Karuna Amman told a press conference.

Muralitharan formed the TMVP from fighters loyal to him who defected from the mainstream Tamil Tigers in 2004. The group has since turned into a political party and Muralitharan last year was sworn in as a parliamentarian.

UNICEF accuses the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) rebels -- and previously had accused the TMVP -- of abducting children or forcibly recruiting them.

Sri Lanka's military has cornered the Tamil Tigers in less than 400 sq km (155 sq mile) in northern Sri Lanka along with what aid agencies say are about 230,000 people trapped between the separatists and a Sri Lankan military onslaught.

UNICEF says thousands of children are caught in the fighting and estimates more than 1,500 children were still serving as soldiers as of mid-September, most of them with the Tigers.

The U.N. agency estimates more than 5,600 underage fighters have been recruited or re-recruited in Sri Lanka, the vast majority by the Tamil Tigers, since a 2002 ceasefire in the 25-year civil war broke down in 2006.

The TMVP helped the government evict their former Tiger comrades from the island's east in 2007, and won a landslide victory at polls in the eastern district of Batticaloa last year.

The polls were criticised by observers because the TMVP and its supporters were armed before, during and after voting. (Editing by Bryson Hull and Dean Yates)

Tamil Tiger rebels' leader Velupillai Prabakaran is still hiding in the jungle thickets in northern Sri Lanka, his former deputy told reporters here Friday.

Vinayagamurthi Muralitharan alias Karuna who is now a member of the government group in parliament said that according to the information he received, Prabakaran has not fled the island.

"It will be difficult for him to survive now that the Army is after him," Muralitharan said, adding that the Tiger leader might be hiding in the jungles in the north.

Karuna had been Prabakaran's trusted commander in Eastern Province before he broke away from the mainstream Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) in 2004.

Speculation was rife that the LTTE leader may have fled the northern Mullaithivu district by sea route to a foreign land.

This was after the rebels lost almost 95 percent of the territory it formerly controlled in the north.

Prabakaran has been leading a bloody separatist war since the mid-1980s to set up a separate homeland for the minority Tamil community, citing discrimination at the hands of sinhalese dominated governments.

Sri Lanka is in the grip of its biggest military offensive against Tamil Tiger rebels, but the country's journalists are also facing an unprecedented battle of their own.

Unidentified attackers stabbed weekly newspaper editor Upali Tennakoon and smashed his car as he drove to work Friday in the latest in a string of violent attacks against journalists in Sri Lanka.

The attack against Tennakoon, chief editor of the privately-owned Rivira weekly, and his wife came two weeks after another editor, Lasantha Wickrematunga, was gunned down in a similar attack on the outskirts of Colombo.

Since the killing of the anti-war Sunday Leader editor Wickrematunga on January 8, at least eight senior journalists and media activists have fled the island, fearing that they too could be targeted by unidentified attackers.

Earlier this month, attackers torched a privately owned television station that had been labelled "unpatriotic" by sections of the state media for its coverage of the island's ethnic conflict.

"Journalism has perhaps become the most dangerous profession in this country," the privately run Island newspaper said in a front-page editorial on Saturday.

"It is riskier than even soldiering in that a soldier has to be mindful of only one enemy whereas a journalist does not know from which quarter the icy cold hand of death may reach out for him or her."

President Mahinda Rajapakse has condemned the attacks and ordered probes, but the authorities are yet to make a breakthrough in a country where no one has been brought to justice for killing journalists in the past two decades.

"My government reiterates its commitment to upholding the principles of media freedom and freedom of expression, even under the most trying circumstances," the president said after Wickremataunga's shock killing.

Government ministers have said that the attacks against journalists was a "conspiracy" to discredit the government at a time when it had cornered Tamil Tiger rebels with its biggest ever land, sea and air offensive.

However, the United States on Saturday said that targeting journalists was a sign of the deteriorating media freedom and free expression in the embattled South Asian nation.

"These serious reports are disturbing indicators of the deteriorating atmosphere for media independence in Sri Lanka," the US State Department said in a statement released in Colombo.

"We call on the government of Sri Lanka to protect all of its citizens by enforcing law and order, preventing intimidation of the media, and by conducting swift, full, and credible investigations into attacks on journalists, and other civilians," the statement said.

Both local and international media rights groups have joined in demanding thorough investigations and an end to the culture of impunity that has encouraged attacks against the independent media over the years.

The government's own figures tables in parliament last week showed that nine journalists were killed and another 27 assaulted in the past three years while independent activists say more than a dozen journalists had been killed.

Independent defence analysts have either stopped writing or quit the country even though there is no formal censorship. The government has, however, restricted media access to the embattled regions where fighting is underway.

The New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) has asked foreign diplomats in Colombo to "weigh in forcefully and immediately" with President Rajapakse to put an end to attacks on Sri Lanka's media.

Human Rights Watch also asked Sri Lanka's government to drop terrorism charges against another journalist, J. S. Tissainayagam, and two of his colleagues who have been held since March 2008.

Activists say the climate of fear is worse than in the late 1980s when foreign correspondent Richard de Zoysa was abducted and killed by pro-government vigilantes, prompting over a dozen reporters to flee the island.