Chronology of LTTE terror - Part 29

From the Daily News Archives

When the euphoria of victory dies down, and together with it the media hype ceases, when the guns do not rattle and boom anymore, and the sky, the land and the sea become calm and serene, when tranquillity reigns through it is natural to live in the present moment and forget the past. But one cannot live in the present without a past. Nor can one envision the future discarding the experience of the preceding events. Hence the Daily News is serialising the Chronicle of LTTE Terror taken from our own archives which would remind our readers how it all began. An awareness of the chronology of terror would help us prevent the recurrence of such terror and frustrate any attempts by misguided elements to repeat history to suit their evil designs. It was not simple terror. Nor was terror sporadic. It was all pre-planned, pre-determined, well-calculated terror. The victims were innocent people. Though it is too many innumerate we would like to recall the major episodes in the Chronology of Terror.

Saturday, April 4, 1987:

Reprisal for assassination attempt on Kittu:

Tigers kill 65 rivals

Tamil guerrillas of the powerful Tigers rebel group 65 people believed linked with two rival factions, government intelligence sources told Reuters.

They said the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) rounded up 28 youths last night in the Jaffna peninsula and shot them early today and killed 37 more later.

The killings were to avenge the assassination attempt on an LTTE leader on Monday, the sources said.

A government spokesman said the victims were suspected members of the Eelam People's Revolutionary Liberation Front (EPRLF) or the Tamil Eelam Liberation Organisation (TELO). Krishnakumar, the LTTE Jaffna commander who is known as Kittu, was wounded in a grenade attack on Monday.

He was smuggled across the Palk Straits to Trichnopoly in South India where he was being treated, diplomatic sources said.

The LTTE, the most powerful group fighting for an independent Tamil homeland, is locked in a struggle with the other two groups to bring all rebel factions under its control.

"The 28 were shot dead and a 29th, the owner of a jewellery shop who gave refuge to a TELO suspect, was believed killed also," the sources said.

A government spokesman told Reuters he also received similar reports.

Tamil sources with links in Madras said the LTTE was also investigating the possibility that government agents might have been behind the assassination attempt.

The spokesman said thousands of Jaffna residents had fled their homes since last weekend, ordered out by the LTTE in anticipation of a massive attack on two army camps in the peninsula.

The Tamil sources said some of those who sought refuge in temples, churches, schools and public buildings were patients from Jaffna hospital which was damaged by a mortar on Monday.

The spokesman said the LTTE had ordered civilians to leave their homes so that it could booby-trap them in readiness for the attacks on the army camps.

"The houses were booby trapped so that if the terrorists have to retreat, they can explode them and also blame it on the soldiers," the spokesman said. COLOMBO, Friday, Reuter

Monday, March 9, 1987:

Why were rules on movement of troops breached?:

Tigers hounding out colonists?

The Security Forces, hard on the heels of the LTTE terrorists responsible for Saturday's landmine at Arawanthalawa, in the Vavuniya district, which killed seventeen persons including women and children, are convinced that the attack is part of an effort directed against Sinhala colonists in the area.

"They are trying to get Sinhala villagers out of these remote farming settlements. The victims are inevitably very poor people," a spokesman said.

An investigation is underway to determine how strict rules governing the movement of troops in the troubled areas had been breached at Arawanthalawa in the Vavuniya district on Saturday when a terrorist landmine claimed seventeen lives. The dead included 7 army volunteers, 4 members of the national auxiliary force and six civilians.

Authoritative official sources said yesterday that where a vehicle or vehicles had to be used for movement, not more than four persons should ride a truck. Thus rule had been clearly breached.

"The civilian can't be blamed for joining the forces. But we've got to find out how the rules were breached," the sources said.

The authorities believe that a Mannar-based hit squad had taken a 40-mile jungle route to lay their landmine ambush.

Troops from several camps in the area were deployed for a search-and-destroy operation following information that there was an LTTE hideout in the area.

Our Anuradhapura correspondent reported yesterday that a 3-day-old child had miraculously survived the attack.

One of the dead civilians, a woman whose head had been blasted off her trunk, had not been identified.

Tuesday, March 24, 1987:

Onslaught by LTTE reply to peace moves?

Tigers massacre 25 civilians in EP

Amal JAYASINGHE

Ten soldiers killed in 3 attacks

The LTTE massacred at least 25 Sinhala civilians in an Eastern village and stepped up attacks on military installations in the North as diplomatic moves were made in Colombo and New Delhi to get the Indian mediated peace process back on track, official sources said yesterday.

Authorities in Colombo read the Tigers' latest strike on the Serunewa village, seven miles North West of Kantalai, and military camps in the North as a signal of their resentment at being pressurised by New Delhi to join the negotiations. "These attacks are an indication that the LTTE is not interested in a settlement. Signs are that India will bring them to the negotiating table and they are trying to resist that," an official source said.

In a pre-dawn attack, terrorists killed at least 12 women, five children and eight men and set fire to all the houses in the Serunewa village, the media source said last evening. It said that the security forces have cordoned the area to prevent the escape of terrorists responsible for the crime.

In Jaffna, five soldiers were killed and at least a dozen injured when terrorists shelled the main military base inside the Fort and the chest clinic entry points on Sunday night, the media centre and hospital sources said.

The media centre in a release issued yesterday morning said that the two sentry points were badly damaged and some soldiers were missing after the attack. The terrorists had fired mortars and small arms at the camp.

"The terrorists were heard shouting anti-Indian slogans and that they want war, not peace," the release said. In a simultaneous attack, terrorists shelled the sentry point on the Pannai causeway killing four soldiers and injuring several others. An official spokesman said five soldiers and three constables were believed kidnapped by the terrorists as they were reportedly missing after the Pannai incident.

Reports from Delhi say that Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi has taken personal charge of the Lankan issue as he feels quick action should be taken to settle the island's ethnic problem.

Hospital sources said a dozen wounded men were helicoptered to the Sri Jayewardenepura hospital and about three of them had been critically hurt. The soldiers who died in the Jaffna Fort shelling were named as Sergeant H. W. Zoysa from Balapitiya, Corporal P. H. S. W. Munasinghe from Thihagoda, Matara, Lance Corporal S. S. Pathirana from Thorawewa, Gal Oya and Riflemen Abeysinghe Bandara from Mediyawa, Maho and S. G. L. Samarakoon from Kahatagasdigiliya. Media Centre Chairman Tilak Ratnakara said troops acted with restraint despite the terrorist shelling. "If the security forces retaliated, there would have been several civilian casualties," he said. He said the exact fatality figures would be available today after the debris of the sentry points was cleared. In a separate incident, terrorists shelled the Navatkuli camp, injuring one solider. However, troops retaliated with mortar fire. Another solider was killed and three were injured in an exchange of fire with terrorists at Pan Medawachchiya, in the Trincomalee district, on Sunday night. The terrorists were seen dragging their wounded from the scene, the centre said.

In the Kilinochchi and Jaffna districts, troops killed at least five terrorists in separate encounters on Sunday night. At Kilinochchi, forces raided an LTTE hide-out and killed three terrorists and injured one. Those killed were named Vasanthan, Meesai and Vino. "An EROS safe house and a timber collection depot were also destroyed along with cylinders, grenades and claymore mines," the centre said. At Vasavilan in the Jaffna district, patrolling troops confronted a group of terrorists and killed two of them.

Terrorists slaughter villagers - LTTE slaughters other terrorist groups

Wijitha NAKKAWITA

March 1987 was almost at its end with a very few incidents of terrorist attacks on civilians reported. Yet like in Julius Caesar of William Shakespeare "Beware the Ides of March1" the soothsayer's prophesy March for Sri Lanka was proving to be more and more dangerous.

During this month the terrorists groups were at one another's throats but before the killing fields of the north opened up LTTE terrorists once again attacked a poor farmer village Arawantalawa in Vavunia district on March 9 and killed 6 civilians. Their next target was Soruweva near Kantale on March 9 where they killed 12 women, 5 children and 8 men all unarmed civilians who were not a party to any conflict. After that carnage the LTTE killers set fire to the houses of the victims and as usual disappeared into the night.

They next shelled the Pannai causeway in the east and damaged it killing 5 more civilians.

The Minister of National Security Lalith Athulathmudali was quoted saying that the terrorists had no policies but only terrorism and fascism.

As march was ending a rival terrorists group had lobbed a grenade into the vehicle in which the LTTE's Jaffna 'commander' Kittu was seriously injured.

The LTTE rushed Kittu across the Palk Strait to India for treatment as he could not have been admitted to a local hospital as he was a fugitive from the law, a man wanted as a suspect in a number of murders.

Kittu was to become a cripple for life depending on crutches to move about but his ruthlessness remained with him to the end of his life. On that occasion LTTE boss Prabhakaran had ordered reprisal for the attack on his associate.

Just five days after Kittu was attacked the LTTE started rounding up all the members or sympathizers of the rival TELO and EPRLF terrorist groups and they first abducted 28 youth on April 3 and on the same night before the next day dawned 37 other young men of the north mostly of Jaffna were rounded up and all were shot dead in public places bringing the total of such persons to 65.

There was one other man a jeweler too who was killed for allowing a young man belonging to one of the two rival groups to hide in his house when the LTTE killers were rounding up TELO and EPRLF cadres.

At the same time New Delhi was trying to contact the LTTE killer squad boss to try and bring him round for talks with the government of Colombo but the man who a few days back had bragged that the LTTE was like the Mafiosi did not surface in India or in Sri Lanka continuing to keep off all decent or civilized exercises like trying to find a political settlement for the perceived or real grievances of the Tamil of the north and east.

There seemed to have been one other terrorist group that now worked hand in glove with Prabhakaran and that was EROS who gave the other terrorist group support in providing explosives. As the month of March was ending these two groups wreaked vengeance on Sri Lankan society.

Yet the next month April was going to prove even bloodier beginning with the slaughter of TELO and EPRLF members but the EROS and LTTE were going to commit worse crimes as we shall see.

Saturday, April 4, 1987:

Kittu's rivals bring out the band to celebrate

Srimal ABEYEWARDENE

Conflicting reports on the fate of the LTTE's 27-year-old Jaffna commander, Sathasivam Krishnakumar alias Kittu, continue to filter in.

While official intelligence reports state that Kittu is unlikely to recover from the injuries he received on Monday, when grenades were lobbed into his vehicle, killing two of his bodyguards on the spot, a group of EPRLF fighters were reported to have celebrated his death with a band, playing music for several hours.

Reports said heavily armed groups of the LTTE were still continuing a house to house search of Kittu's attackers in the peninsula.

An LTTE spokesman in Madras told newsmen that Kittu was injured, but out of danger. Intelligence sources rule out the possibility that Kittu was attacked on the orders of his cousin, LTTE leaders Velupillai Prabhakaran. According to reports, there had been good relations between the two men, with Kittu following Prabhakaran's directions from Madras. The whereabouts of Prabakaran, who appears to have gone into hiding, are still not known.

Jaffna yesterday confirmed a report that Kittu's girl friend had attempted to commit suicide after he was attacked. She is now out of danger and under medical attention at the Jaffna hospital, official sources said.

Monday: Terrorists massacre over 100 civilians

Yesterday: Sixty Tamil civilians and 11 terrorists killed in explosion