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Sri Lanka | ||
Tamil Tigers trapped in a square kilometre | ||
2009-05-17 | ||
COLOMBO: Sri Lankan troops on Saturday seized the countryÂ’s entire coastline for the first time in a 25-year war with the Tamil Tigers, the military said, cutting off escape for separatist rebels now facing annihilation.
“Now we have linked up on the coastline and the Sea Tigers’ activities are no more,” military spokesman Brigadier Udaya Nanayakkara said, referring to the Tigers’ naval wing. Troops were still closing in on the rebels, he said. Another 4,500 people fled the sandy spit of land controlled by the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE), bringing the total to nearly 20,000 since Thursday, Nanayakkara said. Intelligence reports indicated that LTTE founder-leader Vellupillai Prabhakaran and other senior Tigers were in the remaining LTTE territory, Nanayakkara said.
“I will be going back to a country that has been totally freed from the barbaric acts of the LTTE,” he said in a speech at an international gathering in Jordan. | ||
Posted by:Steve White |