Tigers can no more fight like a conventional army - Army Chief
P. KARUNAKHARAN
COLOMBO: The Tigers have "lost their capability of fighting as
a conventional army" because of the offensive the military is waging
against them, Army Chief Lt. Gen. Sarath Fonseka said yesterday.
"The LTTE has lost the capability of fighting as a conventional army.
Although they are (still) fighting us, they (are) not in the same manner
as was in the past.
That type of resistance is not there anymore," Fonseka told members
of the Foreign Correspondents Association inside the heavily guarded
Army headquarters.
The Army Chief, who has commanded many military operations against
the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) over three decades, said
although the LTTE's fighting capabilities had been badly weakened, it
would take another one year or so "to completely defeat them
militarily".
Claiming that not less than 9,000 LTTE cadres have been killed in
clashes with Sri Lankan troops since August 2006, the Army Chief said
that government troops "are now working on the overall plan of
completely defeating the LTTE militarily", not just capturing fresh
territories.
"We do not just go for terrains, but we go for the kill. This is the
difference between the military operations in the past and the present,"
he said.
He added that the military had got the right guidance and leadership
from President Mahinda Rajapaksa and his Government to accomplish its
task. In April 2006 he narrowly survived with serious injuries a suicide
attack inside the Army headquarters in Colombo.
Commenting on the ongoing military operations in the North, the Army
Chief said the troops had regained several hundred square km where the
Tigers held sway.
He said the troops were just four kilometres short of the LTTE's
strategic Sea Tiger base at Vidattaltivu in the northwestern coastal
belt in Mannar district. "I am sure the LTTE will totally lose even
their present capability in less than one year.
Then they will resort to a totally different type of tactic," Fonseka
said.
Indo Asian News Service |