Sri Lanka Troops, Rebels in Fierce Fight

COLOMBO, Sri Lanka â€”  Separatist Tamil guerrillas and thousands of Sri Lankan troops attempting to encircle the rebel-controlled city of Jaffna were involved in fierce fighting Saturday, rebel and official sources said.

“They were face to face firing (with the rebels). Civilians in the area got killed but no one knows how many,� a Tamil in Vavuniya, south of the Jaffna peninsula, said.

He said relatives who fled from Jaffna on Friday reported bitter clashes between troops and guerrillas of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam near Palaly, the main military airfield.

Official sources said heavy resistance by the Liberation Tigers, backed by members of the Eelam Revolutionary Organization of Students, continued Saturday and had halted the troops’ advance.

Troops Bottled Up

Guerrillas seeking an independent state for minority Tamils have effectively controlled the 1,000-square-mile Jaffna peninsula for the last two years, bottling up government troops in 10 small camps in the area.

Official sources had called the current operation, a three-pronged advance from army camps at Thondamannar, Palaly and Vasavilan, a “small-scale offensive,� but diplomatic sources said Friday that up to 5,000 extra troops had been sent to the peninsula to back up the 2,500 to 3,000 stationed there.

“For some peculiar reason, the military is keeping (its offensive) under wraps,� said a government official usually well informed on military operations.

A brief government statement Saturday said only that the army camp at Jaffna Fort, inside the city, had been bombarded by mortars and that security forces had retaliated.

Family Reported Slain

Travelers from Jaffna said that soldiers Thursday had lined up and shot dead a family of seven whom they found in a house apparently used as an air raid shelter by the rebels.

A government spokesman called the report “a complete fabrication.�

Tamil sources also said that planes had dropped drums containing “some kind of a fuel which catches fire when it spills on the ground� near Vasavilan.

A government spokesman said the military had not used napalm in Jaffna or anywhere else.

Tamil sources also said Italian-made Marchetti aircraft strafed Nallur, the Liberation Tigers’ headquarters just outside Jaffna city.

The country has been plagued by violence between the majority Sinhalese, who are mostly Buddhists, and the minority Tamils, predominantly Hindus who account for about 20% of the population and live in the north and eastern provinces.