Eleven Sri Lankan soldiers killed in battle with Tamil rebels, military says

COLOMBO, Sri Lanka (AP) _ Sri Lankan soldiers backed by air strikes and artillery fire launched a fresh attack on ethnic Tamil rebels in the country's embattled north, leaving 11 troops dead and 53 wounded, a defense official said Saturday, as the country edged closer to all-out war.

The fighting in northern Jaffna comes less than a week after the army claimed to have routed Tamil Tigers from Sampur, a rebel-held village in the northeast, and despite a 2002 cease-fire.

While neither side has withdrawn from the truce, weeks of escalating battles along borders separating rebel- and government-held territory in the northeast have left it in tatters.

The Tigers have threatened retaliation and a resumption of war unless the army withdraws from Sampur.

The military pounded rebel-held territory in the north with air strikes and artillery after Tamil Tigers stepped up their attacks on government troops, military spokesman Brig. Prasad Samarasinghe said Saturday.

``The (rebels) began attacking us with artillery fire on Thursday. We have been retaliating since then. This is a limited operation to neutralize their artillery bases,'' Samarasinghe said.

He said 11 soldiers had been killed and at least 53 wounded. He had no details about rebel casualties.

The government's Media Center for National Security said air strikes and multi-barreled rocket fire took out the rebels' heavy artillery bases before ground troops moved in early Saturday.

The pro-rebel TamilNet Web site said the military has been shelling rebel bunkers in Muhamalai, at the base of the army-controlled Jaffna peninsula for two days. It said there were no rebel casualties.

Jaffna has long been a flash point for violence in Sri Lanka's 19-year war between the Sinhalese-dominated state and Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam, who claim it as the cultural homeland of the country's 3.2 million ethnic Tamil minority.

The Tigers want to carve out a separate state for predominantly Hindu Tamils, citing decades of discrimination by the mostly Buddhist Sinhalese majority.

The conflict _ one of Asia's longest running _ cost the lives of about 65,000 people before the truce, which most here now say exists on paper only.

Hundreds of combatants and civilians have been killed and about 220,000 displaced since April, when the military launched air strikes on rebel territory in northeast Trincomalee in retaliation for a failed suicide attempt on the life of a top-ranking general.

Clashes broke out again in late July in Trincomalee over a water source blocked by the rebels, sparking three weeks of fierce fighting and an army ground offensive.

Then, on Aug. 11, the Tigers made a major push to retake Jaffna.

Although the government claimed to have beaten back the rebels in 11-days, sporadic artillery fire across the northern border and government airstrikes on rebel bases have continued.

Transport to and from the peninsula also remains cut, stranding thousands of people, including foreign aid workers, students and businesspeople, and leaving the region short of food, medicine and other basic goods.

A naval ship carrying 795 civilians from Jaffna reached the northeastern port of Trincomalee late Saturday, the military said.

The ship was not flying the flag of the International Committee of the Red Cross, as a previous ferry evacuating foreign nationals had, and TamilNet accused the government of using civilians as ``human shields'' to move military goods to Trincomalee.

Four fast attack navy craft escorted the ship as it traveled from Jaffna down the northeastern coast of Sri Lanka, the Web site said.

The Tamil Tigers have said they cannot guarantee the safety of sea or air transport to and from Jaffna in light of the military's ongoing operations.

EU for stringent enforcement of ban on LTTE

PK Balachandran

Colombo, September 9, 2006

Stung by the LTTE's refusal to accept truce monitors from the European Union (EU) countries, the EU parliament on Thursday called upon member states to enforce the ban on the Tamil militant organisation in a stringent manner.

The LTTE was banned by the EU at the end of May this year. Subsequently, with effect from September 1, the LTTE refused to accept truce monitors from the EU countries on the plea that they had lost their neutrality as a result of the ban.

The EU Parliament's resolution on the current situation in Sri Lanka asked member states to take "robust and determined" action to investigate the agents of the LTTE; properly enforce the travel ban on its officials; inhibit the movement of agents and couriers; arrest and repatriate those involved in terrorist support activities; confiscate assets associated with the LTTE, including its commercial shipping fleet; freeze suspect bank accounts and close companies and undertakings associated with the LTTE.

The resolution urged member states to take effective measures to "prevent the indoctrination and intimidation of Tamils resident in their countries and the extortion of money to fund LTTE activities."

The EU came down heavily on recruitment of children by the two factions of the LTTE (one led by Prabhakaran and the other by the renegade Karuna).

It described the recruitment of child soldiers as an "appalling abuse of children".

Calling upon the government of Sri Lanka to safeguard human rights, the resolution welcomed Sri Lankan President Mahinda Rajapaksa's offer to invite an international independent group of eminent persons as observers of investigations into the recent abductions and disappearances and extra judicial killings in the island.

It asked Rajapaksa to seek the advice of UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, Louise Arbour, in establishing the independent commission "so as to ensure its independence and effectiveness."

For the maintenance of better law and order and render ethnic justice, the EU parliament asked the government of Sri Lanka to appoint the members of the National Police Commission and recruit more Tamil and Tamil-speaking police officers.

The EU parliament called upon the government of Sri Lanka and the opposition United National Party to work in close cooperation to take "robust" action against terrorism and to address the legitimate grievances of the Tamil minority through a "bold gesture of reconciliation."