SLA advance in Vaakarai

[TamilNet, Wednesday, 01 September 1999, 17:39 GMT]
The Sri Lanka Army moved up to Kathiraveli unopposed by the Tigers in an operation launched in the early hours of the morning today to take the coastal areas beyond Vaakarai, 64 km. north of Batticaloa. Kathiraveli is a coastal hamlet 15 km. north of Vaakarai.

Sources in the area said troops baked by armour had moved north of their positions in Vaakarai along the coastal road to take the hamlet, hitherto a stronghold of Liberation Tigers.

The SLA considered this main place from the which the Tigers were ferrying hundreds o their troops recruited and trained in the Batticaloa and Ampara districts to the Mullaithivu coast.

The flow of manpower from east to boost the LTTE's military strength in the Vanni can be interdicted, according the SLA, if Kathiraveli and its environs are brought under army' control.

Sources said that lorry loads of equipment for setting up camps in the region into which the army move in today were sent behind the troops.

A temporary camp has been set up at Vammivettuvaan, 6 km. north of Vaakarai sources said.

Vaakarai came under the control of the Liberation Tigers in 1995. The SLA recaptured the area on June 2, 1998.