THE SRI Lankan army intensified air strikes against Tamil Tiger bases in the island's north yesterday after wresting control of a strategic town from the rebels that could signal closure to the country's 25-year civil war, writes Rahul Bediin New Delhi.
The defence ministry said helicopter gunships and fighter jets attacked defence lines of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) on the Jaffna peninsula. The attack happened hours after the military recaptured Pooneryn from the separatists after almost 15 years.
Soon after seizing Pooneryn and the strategic northwestern coastal A-32 on Saturday morning President Mahinda Rajapakse urged the rebels in a nationwide televised address to lay down their arms and surrender. He said the military had dismantled the last rebel defence in the northwest and was poised to make a final push for it political headquarters in Killinochi, 350km north of the capital Colombo.
Since the early 1990s the military has had no land link to the northern Jaffna peninsula, forcing it to depend on the sea and air route to sustain some 40,000 troops in the crucial northern region.
To mark its triumph, the government has declared a week of celebrations from today to pay tribute to the military.
There was no immediate comment from the LTTE which has been fighting since 1983 for a separate homeland for the Tamils in the north and east of the republic, claiming they were discriminated against by the island's Sinhalese majority. More than 70,000 people have died in Sri Lanka's civil war.
"We have eliminated a large number of terrorists during this battle. The remaining terrorists are now running for their lives," Sri Lanka's army chief Lieut Gen Sarath Fonseka said after Pooneryn's capture.
The defence ministry has reported unspecified heavy losses among Tiger fighters but has not announced its own casualties.
Both sides exaggerate casualty figures, routinely claiming to have inflicted heavy losses on the other while underplaying their own. Independent verification remains impossible as journalists and neutral observers are barred from the war zone.
Fighting between the army and LTTE erupted in January after President Rajapakse's federal coalition withdrew from the 2002 Norway-brokered truce.