End looms for Tigers- The Scotsman

UK: Sri Lankan Government forces continue to push deeper into the Tiger heartland and are now within reach of their administrative capital, raising hopes that the end of a brutal 25-year civil war may be near, the widely-circulated The Scotsman said yesterday.

The military campaign has benefited from an international crackdown on the Tigers’ fundraising and smuggling networks, and high-level defections that have undermined grassroots Tamil support for its iron-willed chief, Velupillai Prabhakaran, the newspaper reported.

It said: “Since January, when it scrapped a Norway-brokered ceasefire and vowed to crush the Tigers by the end of the year, the government has poured some Sterling Pounds 821 million into an all-out, multiple-front offensive that has killed about 6,000 rebels and reduced their last stronghold in the island’s northern Wanni region by nearly 75 per cent, according to the Ministry of Defence.

Fewer than 600 troops have died during the period. Military officials said last week they are in artillery range of the Tigers’ de facto capital, Kilinochchi, where Prabhakaran is believed to be hiding in an underground bunker complex.

Casualty claims and battlefield progress, often prone to exaggeration, are impossible to verify independently since journalists are barred from entering the conflict zone, but observers agree security forces are making steady gains, the newspaper said.

“Whatever the future may hold there is no denying that as far as ongoing positional warfare is concerned, it is a case of ‘advantage army’ and that the LTTE (Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam) is being relentlessly forced to fall back from previously held positions,” DBS Jeyaraj, a veteran analyst, wrote in a recent column.

Clashes have intensified as the army moves to cut off a vital sea smuggling route from India, while thrusting into the eastern flank in an effort to surround Kilinochchi.”