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Sri Lanka says 420 Tigers killed in latest battles
AFP - Monday, April 6
COLOMBO (AFP) - - At least 420 Tamil Tiger rebels were killed in three days of clashes in northeast Sri Lanka, the military said on Sunday, as troops moved to wipe out the guerrillas after decades of conflict.
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Security forces won control of the village of Puthukkudiriruppu where the bodies of 250 rebels were found on Sunday alone, spokesman Brigadier Udaya Nanayakkara said.
There was no immediate comment from the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE), who have admitted losing territory to advancing government forces in the coastal district of Mullaittivu.
The rebels were "now facing total annihilation as the soldiers are engaged in man-to-man combat against them in the last terror pocket," the defence ministry said, adding that the rebels had lost their "last stronghold."
The Tigers have been encircled for months in a small area of jungle by troops who appear close to ending the separatists' armed campaign which has raged since 1972.
"We have recovered 420 bodies in the past three days," Nanayakkara said as he announced that the Tigers had now been pushed into a 20-square kilometre (eight square mile) no-fire zone designated by the government.
Government officials had believed less than 500 rebels fighters were still in action before the latest casualty figures.
"The Tigers don't have much ground now. They are in the safe zone that we declared and in the periphery," Nanayakkara said, adding that security forces had suffered slight casualties during the battles.
Tens of thousands of civilians would soon be rescued from the no-fire zone, army chief Lieutenant General Sarath Fonseka was quoted as telling the state-run Sunday Observer.
Concern for the non-combatants trapped in the conflict has mounted, with international calls for a pause in the fighting to allow them to escape, but the government has refused to consider any truce until the rebels surrender.
The United Nations recently reminded Sri Lankan leaders of their "responsibility to protect civilians, and to avoid the use of heavy weapons in areas where there are civilians."
At the height of the Tigers' power in the mid-1990s, they controlled more than a third of the total land mass of Sri Lanka in their fight for an independent Tamil homeland.
Sri Lanka, which pulled out of a Norwegian-arranged truce in January last year, has said for months that its forces were on the verge of dealing a final blow to the Tigers.
The battlefield casualty claims are impossible to verify as journalists are not allowed to travel freely in the area.
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