Sri Lanka's military on Thursday stepped up attacks against suspected Tamil Tiger positions in the island's north where intense ground battles have been raging for months, the defence ministry said.Airforce jets bombed an arms store and a command centre of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) in the north, the ministry said. It gave no details of casualties.
The latest air strikes came as ground troops were battling to capture the northern town of Kilinochchi, 330 kilometers north of the capital Colombo, where the Tigers maintain their political capital. The defence ministry was yet to release details of overnight ground battles. The ministry has been releasing daily tolls from the northern battle field where security forces said they were on the outskirts of Kilinochchi.
Meanwhile Artillery shelling and fighting which erupted in northern Sri Lanka on Thursday forced a United Nations convoy carrying food and aid to more than 230,000 refugees to turn back, officials said. The UN convoy was only the second to enter the war zone, where Sri Lanka's military is battling separatist Tamil Tiger rebels, since the government last month ordered most aid agencies out, saying it could not guarantee their safety. The 50-truck convoy had left Vavuniya, 250 km northeast of the capital Colombo, at midday carrying 750 metric tonnes of food to a growing number of people trapped by fighting. "There was fighting close to the convoy and we decided to turn back," said UN spokesman Gordon Weiss in Colombo. "Right now we are trying to get security assurances from both sides so we can start the process again tomorrow," he added. Growing numbers of people had fled an intensified military offensive against the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE), and have become trapped between rebels who won't let them leave and an army whose offer of safe passage they distrust.