NEW DELHI — The Sri Lankan government announced Sunday that its troops had captured the last major town controlled by the ethnic Tamil guerrilla army, confining the rebels to a small patch of jungle and raising new fears about the fate of civilians trapped behind the front lines.
The Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam, fortified with ground troops, a naval force and even fighter planes, had ruled a vast swath of Sri Lanka’s northeast, running their own police force, courts and tax-collection system.
They have steadily lost territory in the past two and a half years to Sri Lanka’s military. Fighting intensified in recent months as government forces seized several of their important symbolic and strategic holdings and pushed them and an estimated 230,000 ethnic Tamil civilians farther into the northeastern jungles.
The army’s taking of the rebel garrison town of Mullaittivu may signal the end of conventional battles but not of suicide attacks and other deadly tactics that the guerrillas have used for decades in their campaign for an independent state in the northeast.
The army chief, Lt. Gen. Sarath Fonseka, said on state-run television that the army had “captured the Mullaittivu bastion completely today,” according to news reports from the capital, Colombo. He said that the fighting was continuing elsewhere and that the war was “95 percent” over.
There was no confirmation from the Tamil Tigers.
The army said it took the de facto rebel capital, Kilinochchi, three weeks ago, and Elephant Pass, a key corridor, a week later.
It is impossible to verify the government’s accounts because the authorities deny journalists access to anywhere near the front line and because those who question the official version of events in the war are rebuked as traitors.
A journalist, a publisher and his wife have been held under antiterrorism laws for 10 months. A newspaper editor was killed this month, another was beaten on his way to work and a television station was attacked. Several journalists have fled the country recently.
The Associated Press, citing a government administrator working in the Tamil Tiger-controlled area, reported that at least 100 civilians died in artillery fire as fighting intensified last week. Aid agencies have urged the rebels to let civilians cross the front line safely. Those who have managed to sneak by are kept in camps guarded by the Sri Lankan Army.
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/26/world/asia/26lanka.html?ref=todayspaper&pagewanted=print
Copyright 2009 The New York Times Company
