Sri Lankan troops advancing on the last remaining pockets of rebel resistance killed at least 111 Tamil Tigers in separate ground and sea clashes on Saturday, the military said. Security forces recovered the bodies of 93 Tigers killed at Puthukkudiriruppu while another 18 guerrillas perished in a separate sea battle on Saturday, military spokesman brigadier Udaya Nanayakkara said.
"It is one of the biggest blows for the Tigers recently," Nanayakkara said referring to the military drive to crush Tigers who have been confined to a narrow strip of coastline in the district of Mullaittivu for several months. He said troops had also captured a 130 mm artillery gun which had been used by the Tigers to attack security forces moving in on them. There was no immediate comment from the Tigers.
The assault has pushed the rebels into a 20-square-kilometre (eight-square-mile) patch of land in Mullaittivu. Earlier in the day, the navy's special boat squadron sank one vessel belonging to the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) while two others were destroyed by ground troops when they tried to beach, the military said.
The military believed that at least 11 rebels were killed by the navy while another seven perished when the army directed ground fire at Tiger boats that were trying to get to shore. Sri Lankan troops captured a key village from the Tigers on Friday after heavy fighting that left at least 44 guerrillas dead while another 13 rebels were killed elsewhere on the same day, the military said.
The United Nations and foreign aid organisations say as many as 150,000 civilians may be trapped in the combat zone, although the Sri Lankan government insists the figure is less than half that. A top UN official, Walter Kalin, was visiting camps for war displaced people in the north of the island on Saturday, officials said.
Kalin, the UN secretary general's representative on the human rights of internally displaced persons, spoke with people in the government-held town of Vavuniya who had fled the fighting. However, he did not travel to the front lines.
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