The Ceylon News

The military is under pressure to call a temporary halt to the fighting

The Sri Lankan government says it is considering a humanitarian pause in the offensive against Tamil Tiger rebels in the north-east of the country.

The pause would allow civilians caught up in the fighting time to escape.

A senior foreign ministry official told the BBC that the details for a halt would be worked out shortly.

Earlier, the Sri Lankan military said more than 50 Tamil Tiger guerrillas were killed in land and sea battles in the north-eastern region.

"The government is considering a humanitarian pause and the modalities will be worked out shortly," Sri Lankan Foreign Secretary Dr Palitha Kohona told the BBC, without elaborating further.

The Sri Lankan government has been under immense pressure from the UN and other international bodies to call a temporary halt in the fighting to allow time for tens of thousands of trapped civilians to escape.

The UN says nearly 3,000 civilians may have been killed and 7,000 others injured in the fighting in the last two months.

Fierce clashes

Earlier, the military said two separate clashes in the north-eastern region had left more than 50 rebels dead.

There has been no reaction from the Tamil Tigers to the claims but pro-rebel websites said the rebels were offering stiff resistance in the area.

Neither version of events could be independently confirmed, as journalists are not allowed to report from inside the conflict zone.

Meanwhile, officials say more than 1,600 civilians fled the war zone and reached government-controlled areas on Monday.

The government says more than 61,000 people have already fled from rebel-held areas and have been housed in special camps in the northern region.

The Tamil Tiger rebels appealed again Tuesday for a halt to fighting in their war against the Sri Lankan government, though they denied they were on the brink of defeat despite being backed into an ever-shrinking pocket of land.

The appeal for a cease-fire from S. Pathmanathan, in charge of international diplomatic relations for the rebels, comes as the government says it is close to crushing the rebels and ending 25 years of civil war.

Pathmanathan was quoted by the pro-rebel TamilNet Web site as saying the international community needed "to apply adequate pressure on the government to enter into a cease-fire with the Tigers."

There was no immediate comment from the government, which has said in the past that it would agree to a cease-fire if the rebels laid down their arms first. Pathmanathan called that "not realistic."

Even though the rebels have suffered a string of military defeats in the last several years and are now fighting desperately to defend a narrow strip of jungle and beach measuring just 8.4 square miles (21 square kilometers) on Sri Lanka's northeastern coast, Pathmanathan said it was a temporary setback.

"It is wrong to assume that the LTTE is in a weakened position. The LTTE is a versatile and resilient movement," he said, using the acronym for the rebels' formal name, the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam.

Most of the area the rebels occupy has been designated a "no-fire" zone by the government to protect trapped civilians. The U.N. estimates there are 150,000 to 190,000 such people, resulting in dozens of deaths each day. The government disputes the U.N. figure, saying half that number are stuck in the area.

The government and international bodies have accused the rebels of holding the civilians as human shields, and this week the Ministry of Defense said the rebels were mounting heavy artillery and mortar attacks from the zone.

Pathmanathan denied that the rebels were holding the people against their will.

"The Tamil people have lived with us in the areas that were under our governance and have moved with us in the recent displacements seeking our protection," he said.

Verification of the competing claims was not possible because independent journalists are not allowed into the conflict area. Direct contact with the rebels in the north is also no longer possible because communications links have been cut.

The Tamil Tiger rebels have fought since 1983 to create an independent homeland for ethnic minority Tamils, who have faced decades of marginalization by successive governments controlled by ethnic Sinhalese. More than 70,000 people have been killed in the violence.

The Sri Lankan Navy sank four Tamil Tiger boats yesterday in a battle that left at least 26 rebels dead and struck a huge blow against the feared Sea Tiger suicide fleet, officials said.

The dead in the four-hour battle off the northeastern coast of Sri Lanka included Maran, a senior figure in the Sea Tigers, the rebels’ naval division, a government spokesman said. Maran’s boat was hit as it fled after making a failed attempt to break a navy blockade. One navy sailor died.

The Sea Tigers were developed during the 1980s to smuggle in equipment to the rebels’ ground forces but also dabbled in piracy and came to specialise in suicide missions, using fibreglass boats packed with explosives against the Navy. In February the Government claimed that it had killed Soosai, the Sea Tigers’ commander, in an air raid.

The separatist Tigers have lost a string of strongholds on the ground in fighting in recent months and are now said to be pinned down in only 8.4sq miles (22sq km) of jungle and beach in Mullaittivu district.