SLA operation in Batticaloa

[TamilNet, Wednesday, 30 May 2001, 14:11 GMT]
Sri Lanka Army (SLA) soldiers Wednesday morning launched a "limited" operation, advancing from their camp at Vavunathivu, about 5 km. southwest of Batticaloa town, into the villages of Navatkadhu, Karaveddi and Monkeykaddy in the district's western hinter land, said sources. No confrontations with the Liberation Tigers were reported, they added.
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Search operation in Mannar

[TamilNet, Wednesday, 30 May 2001, 14:09 GMT]
Five people were arrested during a combined search operation by Sri Lanka Army soldiers and police in the Mannar town Wednesday. The operation which began around 9 a.m. went on till noon, local residents said.
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'Onward with the war' say Sinhala nationalists

[TamilNet, Saturday, 26 May 2001, 16:45 GMT]
"The need of the hour is not peace negotiations but to prosecute the war correctly. We should not think about how to negotiate peace but only about conducting the war victoriously. Sri Lanka is the homeland of the Sinhala people. No part of it can be the homeland of a minority. Autonomy and self-determination should not be granted or recognised", resolved a conference of Buddhist monks, leading Sinhala Buddhist businessmen, intellectuals and retired senior officers of the Sri Lankan security forces in Colombo Saturday. The conference was organised, according to a spokesman, to "consider the implications of the forthcoming peace talks and the constitutional proposals on the country". Meanwhile, Colombo stated categorically Saturday that it will not lift the proscription of the Liberation Tigers as a pre-requisite for starting talks.
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Soldier, police officer killed in Mannar

[TamilNet, Thursday, 24 May 2001, 11:28 GMT]
A Sri Lanka Army soldier was killed in a counter-ambush by the Liberation Tigers at Uyilankulam in the north-western Mannar District, around 9.30 p.m. Wednesday, army sources said. The soldiers were lying in ambush ahead of Uyilankulam forward defence lines, the source said.
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Trincomalee ambush toll rises

[TamilNet, Wednesday, 23 May 2001, 05:50 GMT]
Seventeen Sri Lanka Navy (SLN) sailors were killed and twenty-eight wounded in a claymore mine blast Wednesday morning around 9.45 a.m. near Thambalagamam on the Trincomalee-Habarana road. The SLN personnel were travelling in a convoy when a bus carrying them was hit by the blast, sources said.
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Deep penetration group kills one, takes three

[TamilNet, Tuesday, 22 May 2001, 17:44 GMT]
One civilian was killed and three were reported missing in an attack by a Sri Lanka army Deep Penetration team near Mathurankerni Kulam, 70 kilometres north of Batticaloa, Tuesday around 10 a.m. Yoganathan Kesavarajah, 24, had gone to chop firewood when he was shot dead by the SLA’s special penetration group. His wife is pregnant with their first child, relatives said. The three persons who are reported missing, had gone to collect honey in the jungles near Mathurankerni Kulam. Relatives said that the three were abducted by two SLA deep penetration teams.
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12 soldiers killed, 21 wounded in Tiger ambushes

[TamilNet, Friday, 18 May 2001, 07:51 GMT]
Twelve Sri Lanka Army soldiers were killed and 21 were wounded in two separate attacks by the Liberation Tigers Friday morning, said army sources in the northern town of Vavuniya. Earlier in a claymore mine blast on the Vavuniya-Mannar road, a SLA soldier was killed and another was wounded.
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Two killed, Muslim town tense

[TamilNet, Wednesday, 16 May 2001, 13:31 GMT]
Oddamavadi, a Muslim town 34 kilometres north of Batticaloa, was tense Wednesday as following the murder of two cattle herders allegedly by Sri Lanka army soldiers from the Naavaladi camp. Shops in the Oddamavadi bazaar were shut down in protest Wednesday. The two men, Noor Mohammed Abdul Latif, 35, and Seeni Mohammdhu Sareef, 43, were taken out of their huts by armed men close to midnight and were beaten and shot to death, relatives said. The identity card of a SLA soldier and an army cap were found near the place where the bodies of the two herders lay this morning. A crowd that gathered round the bodies of the two herders Wednesday morning abused and attempted to assault SLA personnel who went to conduct inquiries at the scene of the murder.
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Batticaloa villages shelled

[TamilNet, Wednesday, 16 May 2001, 13:28 GMT]
Sri Lanka Army (SLA) soldiers stationed at the 23-3 Brigade Head Quarters fired several rounds of shells towards the villages of Kannankudha, Karaveddi and Thaandiyadi in the western hinterland of the Batticaloa district Wednesday noon, damaging some houses in the area, according to reports from the area.
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3 SLA soldiers killed in claymore blast

[TamilNet, Monday, 14 May 2001, 17:22 GMT]
Three Sri Lanka Army soldiers were killed and four others were wounded when the Liberation Tigers set off a powerful claymore mine at Aluthnuwara in the east of the island around 4.30 p.m. Monday, army sources said.
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12 SLA soldiers killed at Sungawil -VoT

[TamilNet, Friday, 11 May 2001, 18:50 GMT]
Twelve Sri Lanka Army soldiers were killed in an ambush by the Liberation Tigers at Sungawil in the Polonnaruwa district around 6.40 a.m Thursday. The LTTE ambush unit recovered 3 bodies of the SLA soldiers killed in the attack, the Voice of Tigers (VoT) radio said Friday evening.
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Ratwatte heaps scorn on LTTE's ceasefire-again

[TamilNet, Thursday, 10 May 2001, 11:51 GMT]
"The LTTE's ceasefire was a myth. The troops involved in the Agni Khiela operation have been successfully extending their area of control", said Sri Lanka's Deputy Minister for Defence, Gen. Anuruddha Ratwatte, speaking on the extension of the Emergency Thursday. Two elite Divisions of the Sri Lanka army comprising more than ten thousand soldiers took part in Operation Agni Khiela I barely two hours after the unilateral ceasefire declared by the Liberation Tigers on 24 December 2000 expired last month. The Tigers routed the offensive in four days of fighting. Gen. Ratwatte lambasted further the Tigers and their unilateral ceasefire in his speech.
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Fire-fight amid Vesak gloom in Batticaloa

[TamilNet, Wednesday, 09 May 2001, 12:12 GMT]
A Sri Lanka army soldier was killed and one was wounded in a fire-fight with the Liberation Tigers at Kommathurai, 18 kilometres north of Batticaloa town, Tuesday night around 8 p.m. Fighting broke out when SLA troops lying in ambush by a crossing point between the district's large hinterland controlled by the Liberation Tigers and the coast dominated by the army opened fire upon detecting the movement of armed persons.
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Salli-sustaining the will to survive against odds

[TamilNet, Tuesday, 08 May 2001, 15:06 GMT]
Salli is an old coastal village on the northern side of the Trincomalee Bay. Like hundreds of other Tamil villages in Sri Lanka's north and east, Salli is a shadow of its former self. Last week the Sri Lanka Navy, which has ringed the village with four camps, ordered civilians here to stay indoors after 6 p.m.
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Armed guards for Vesak lantern

[TamilNet, Monday, 07 May 2001, 20:04 GMT]
Sri Lanka Army soldiers arrested five Tamils Monday morning in a cordon and search operation at Faizal Nagar in Kinniya Division, 15-km northwest of Trincomalee town. The arrested Tamils are said to be inmates of a refugee camp at Faizal Nagar where a large number of Tamil families displaced from Upparu village in 1998 live.
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Batticaloa shuts down for massacred children

[TamilNet, Monday, 07 May 2001, 02:43 GMT]
Shops and businesses were closed and few people were on the roads Monday in the Batticaloa district to observe the Buddhist festival if Vesak as a day of mourning for the 10 children from an orphanage who were killed by Sri Lanka army soldiers on 17 May last year. The main road from Kalmunai to Batticaloa was blocked at Ondaachchi Madam, Kaluthavalai and Thalangkudah by villagers. Fourteen persons, including ten children who came to the Batticaloa town from an orphanage in Aayiththiyamalai, were shot dead during the Vesak festival by SLA troops last year.
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Bravery awards after SLA rout

[TamilNet, Sunday, 06 May 2001, 20:53 GMT]
The Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) this week saluted their units which participated in the rout of the Sri Lanka Army (SLA) offensive in the southern Jaffna peninsula two weeks ago, official LTTE sources said Sunday. The special award for bravery was awarded to the men and women who had defeated a three pronged assault by fifteen thousand SLA soldiers backed by artillery, naval gunboats and air power, they said.
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Tigers hand over 29 SLA bodies

[TamilNet, Friday, 04 May 2001, 11:01 GMT]
Twenty-nine bodies of the Sri Lanka Army soldiers killed in the Jaffna battle last week were handed over to the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) by the Liberation Tigers Friday, Mr.Thangan, the Head of the political administration of the LTTE handed over the bodies to the local ICRC representative at a meeting held at Kilinochchi at 9 a.m., according to an official statement from the LTTE head quarters in the northern Vanni.
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Tigers hand over more SLA bodies

[TamilNet, Sunday, 29 April 2001, 06:12 GMT]
The Liberation Tigers handed over 26 bodies of Sri Lanka army soldiers to the International Committee of the Red Cross in Kilinochchi Sunday morning, ICRC spokesman Harasha Gunwardena told Tamilnet. This brings the total bodies of SLA personnel handed over by the Tigers to the ICRC to 56. The Tigers handed over the bodies of 30 government troopers Saturday morning.
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Offensive routed, over 2400 SLA casualties - LTTE

[TamilNet, Saturday, 28 April 2001, 11:41 GMT]
The Liberation Tigers in statement issued from their international headquarters in the Vanni Saturday afternoon said that the Sri Lankan army was pushed back to its original position in the early hours of the morning today. The statement said that the SLA’s 55, 52 Divisions and the elite 53 special forces Division, suffered more than 2400 casualties in ferocious counter offensives by the combat formations of the Liberation Tigers. “LTTE commando units have started clearing the area, about 2 square kilometres, vacated by the army in the Eluthumadduval sector, in southern Jaffna. Decomposing bodies of soldiers and their weapons are scattered everywhere in the area, according to LTTE field commanders”, the statement said.
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