2ND LEAD

Tigers say Vattamadu attack report psy ops

[TamilNet, Thursday, 21 April 2005, 10:31 GMT]
Sri Lanka army claimed Thursday that five Liberation Tigers were killed and seven wounded when a paramilitary attacked their positions in Vattamadu on the island's southeast coast. A senior commander of the LTTE's armed forces in the Batticaloa-Amparai region said that two men had opened fire in the direction of their forward defence positions on the outskirts of the Kanjikudichcha Aaru region Thursday morning. "There were neither casualties nor damage on our side", the LTTE commander said. He dismissed the SLA statement as "routine psy ops".

He said his troops had recovered two kit bags dropped by the gunmen when they fled towards the area held by Sri Lankan armed forces.

"The paramilitary cadres opened fire towards our FDL at Vammiyadikkulam this morning", he said.

The Liberation Tigers control the large and mostly forested Kanjikudichcha Aaru region on the southeast coast.

Liberation Tigers accuse Colombo of arming and deploying paramilitary groups to carry out attacks against them.