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Sri Lankan troops move on Tiger's military base in jungle
AFP - 39 minutes ago
COLOMBO (AFP) - - Sri Lanka said Sunday its troops were battling towards the jungle headquarters of the Tamil Tigers, two days after retaking their main city in a military assault that the government said would crush the guerillas once and for all.
Government soldiers consolidating their new positions in Kilinochchi, the former Tamil political base, cleared mines and booby-traps from abandoned buildings, an AFP photographer flown to the area reported.
Gunfire and intermittent artillery barrages erupted around Kilinochchi, which was captured by security forces on Friday after nearly two years of fighting.
Troops had clashed with the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) on Saturday at four locations outside the town, the ministry said.
"Both sides suffered casualties," a military official said, without giving further details.
Sri Lankan troops have advanced on the military headquarters of the Tamil Tigers and engaged the rebels in fresh gunbattles, having captured their de facto political capital.
The defence ministry said ground forces, backed by helicopter gunships and war planes, were moving towards Mullaittivu, the jungle district along the northeastern seaboard, where the Tigers have their main military facilities.
"The battle for Mullaitivu has already begun," the ministry said in a statement.
Sri Lankans may have been celebrating the fall of the Tamil Tigers' de facto capital of Kilinochchi with street parties but analysts have warned that bloodier battles may lie ahead as the rebel army takes refuge in the surrounding jungle to which they are well accustomed.
In a reminder of Tamil Tiger force a bomb went off at a commercial area of the capital city Colombo on Saturday, wounding three civilians and damaging several vehicles, police said. A suicide bombing in Colombo on Friday killed two people and wounded 36.
The pro-rebel Tamilnet website reported that a petrol station and a bus station were bombed by the air force on Friday morning, killing four civilians and wounding another eight.
The defence ministry said government troops were moving further north of their positions in Kilinochchi in a bid to retake the strategically vital Elephant Pass which was lost to the Tigers in April 2000.
Elephant Pass lies at the entrance to the Jaffna peninsula which security forces wrested from rebel control in 1995.
Military officials said the fall of Kilinochchi had cleared the way for security forces to re-establish control over a vital highway linking the northern Jaffna peninsula with the rest of the country.
Jaffna, which has a population of nearly half a million people and a considerable military presence, used to be supplied by air and sea because the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) controlled the land route.
President Mahinda Rajapakse called the army's capture of Kilinochchi an "unparalleled victory" for the entire nation and urged the rebels to lay down their arms and end their decades-old struggle for a separate homeland.
While losing Kilinochchi is a major setback, the Tigers have shown in the past that they have the ability to rebound.
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Sri Lankan troops move on Tiger's military base in jungle
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