Sea battle off Pt. Pedro

[TamilNet, Sunday, 16 September 2001, 06:09 GMT]
Sri Lanka Military sources in Jaffna said that a mid sea battle to save the troop carrier ship MV was raging from early hours of the morning Sunday off the coast of Pt. Pedro in the northern peninsula. “The exact picture is not yet clear. Casualties have been reported,” one of them said. Earlier, the SLA said that an attack by 20 Sea Tigers boats on ‘MV Pride’ carrying 1200 troops to Jaffna was repulsed in the early hours of the morning Sunday. Meanwhile, the Pt. Pedro jetty where MV Komari and MV Sajintha were unloading was closed by 9.30 a.m. and 300 workers there were sent out “for emergency reasons,” .

Lorries that were loading goods from the jetty were also sent back. An officer of the SLA’s 52-4 brigade in Pt. Pedro said that three Sea Tiger boats were hit by the Sri Lanka Navy in the mid sea battle.