At least 56 Tamil Tiger rebels and four government troops have been killed in heavy fighting across Sri LankaÂ’s embattled north over the weekend, the defence ministry said Sunday.Helicopter gunships were deployed against suspected Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) strongholds in the coastal district of Mannar on Saturday, the defence ministry said. It said a total of 56 rebels were killed in clashes on Friday and Saturday when the military made a new push into rebel-held territory in the northwestern coastal area. There was no immediate word from the Tigers, but a pro-rebel website said the guerrillas had resisted the military offensive, killing 22 government troopers and wounding a further 72. It did not give rebel casualties.
So far this year, the defence ministry has reported that security forces have killed at least 1,957 rebels for the loss of 117 government soldiers. The government numbers and those given by the Tigers cannot be independently confirmed as Colombo bars journalists and rights groups from frontline areas. Three Sri Lankan MPs have also been killed this year, including a lawmaker who died in a blast on Thursday.
The LTTE said its elusive supremo, Velupillai Prabhakaran, on Saturday paid his respects to the MP, Kiddinan Sivanesan, 51, killed in a roadside bomb attack allegedly carried out by government commandos.
Journalists’ arrest: Authorities, meanwhile, detained five mostly ethnic minority Tamil journalists, a media activist group said Sunday, days after Colombo came in for intense criticism over its rights record. Five journalists, all linked to a liberal news website were taken in for questioning over the weekend while some have been detained under tough emergency laws, the Free Media Movement (FMM) said. “We hope that due process will be followed regarding the arrested writers and journalists,” the FMM said, expressing its concern over the latest government crackdown against journalists.
FMM official Sunanda Deshapriya said his groupÂ’s spokesman, Tamil journalist S Sivakumar, had also been detained for 12 hours and later freed by the police Terrorist Investigation Division. International media rights activists have described Sri Lanka as one of the most dangerous places in the world for journalists due to a worsening climate of violence and unofficial censorship.