Chronology of LTTE terror- Part 36
From the Daily News Archives
Friday October 16When 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.,
Friday October 16, 1987:
Encircled in Jaffna, LTTE attempts sidetrack in
Eastern Province:
Tigers kill 22 IPKF, 15 civilians
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Parents and relatives grieve over the
bodies of their young ones massacred by the LTTE |
Twenty two members of the Indian peace-keeping force were killed and
four injured in a landmine blast at Eravur in the northern outskirts of
Batticaloa yesterday, as the IPKF’s campaign to disarm the LTTE entered
its sixth day.
The explosion occurred as the lead vehicle of a convoy of seven
entered Mylambivali, on the Batticaloa-Eravur road, yesterday morning.
It was one of three major incidents reported from the Eastern Province,
where the LTTE, according to military observers, is engaged in
diversionary strategy to draw the fire from the Jaffna peninsula, which
is now the main target of IPKF operations.
IPKF troops who tracked the source at which the landmine was
triggered - a deserted house, a few yards away - kept following cycle
tracks which led away from it, and were fired at from ambush at a spot
nearly a mile further away. An engagement was in progress at this spot
and no details of its outcome were immediately available in Colombo,
official sources said.
At yesterday’s news briefing at the Indian High Commission, an
official denied that troops had engaged in any reprisals at the scene of
the landmine. Correspondents said there were reports of reprisals
including burning of houses and assaults. The diplomat said all such
charges would be investigated.
In Delhi, an Indian External Affair Ministry spokesman said he had
‘no idea’ about the whereabouts of Prabakaran. There were speculative
reports that he was believed to be in Kopay.
The Hindu quoted Kittu saying in Madras that the Tiger leader would
never be taken alive as he wore a cyanide capsule round his neck.
The other Eastern Province ‘incidents’ reported were the killing of
10 Sinhala civilians at Elakanda-Serunuwara on the Allai-Kantalai road,
and five others at Kitul Uttuwa, where a landmine was triggered by LTTE
fighters.
The IPKF lost two soldiers in Jaffna in addition to the 20 landmine
victims in Batticaloa bringing the total death toll since Saturday to
79.
An Indian diplomat said 17 Indian soldiers were missing since
Wednesday and the LTTE communication intercepts indicated that they had
been captured by the Tigers. They were ambushed and captured while on a
search operation.
The IPKF now has firm information that 380 Tigers had died since the
beginning of the operation and the number injured exceed 500. An
intercept read out by an Indian diplomat at a news briefing last evening
said: “A large number of LTTE cadres are dead.”
 The Indian advance was slow yesterday and the troops were still
outside the Jaffna Municipal areas, the diplomat said. On the KKS road,
and IPKF regiment had advanced to Maruthanamadam, a junction about three
miles from the city. Chunakam had fallen. A large quantity of ammunition
and an explosives dump had been destroyed at Maruthanamadam.
Indian troops at Urumpirai were consolidating their positions. A
column thrusting along the Jaffna-Kandy road had reached Kaithady where
they had encountered resistance. House-to-house clearing is taking
place.
Outside Jaffna fort the Indian troops encountering sporadic firing
had directed mortar fire against the attackers. The firing was mainly
from buildings, the Indian diplomat said.
The Indian diplomat who had no details about civilian casualties said
civilians were bound to suffer.
“The civilians are suffering. They have been dislocated... Many are
facing hardships,” the diplomat said.
Over half of Jaffna peninsula’s 800,000 people are living in temples
and churches and schools as refugees. Many go to their homes during the
day and sleep at the camps at night, the diplomat said.
Added the diplomat “Food scarcity is bound to occur. We are taking
steps to bring in food and to distribute it. But Jaffna town is a
problem.”
The multi-purpose co-operative stores are not functioning. The shops
are closed.
Vehicle movement has stopped. The IPKF is arranging a convoy of
lorries to distribute food.
“We are also considering air-dropping of food,” the diplomat said.
The diplomat said Jaffna Hospital was functioning with difficulty.
They are running short of oxygen cylinders. There was no electricity in
the Jaffna peninsula since Sunday. Medical supplies were available and
steps would be taken to supply medicines. At Trincomalee near the sixth
mile post a landmine exploded on Wednesday injuring 12 Indian soldiers,
one critically. The area was cordoned off and 29 people including a
hardcore LTTEer were captured.
The diplomat said India still hoped that the LTTE would surrender
arms and enter the mainstream of politics.
“Our expectation and hope is that the military phase would be short
and we revert to the normalisation process which will usher in peace to
all people of Sri Lanka,” the diplomat said. A Colombo datelined AFP
report quoted an unidentified official in Jaffna saying that 120 bodies
had been brought to the hospital since fighting began a week ago. He had
said that 91 women and 18 children had been wounded in crossfire.
IPKF body count rises
Rodney MARTINESZ
The body count of the IPKF soldiers kept on mounting as the LTTE
stepped up it’s counter attacks on the Jawans now tracking down the
Tigers in earnest following the bloodbath in the wake of the mass
suicide by prominent LTTE leaders a week earlier.Hardly a day passed
without casualties suffered by the Indian Army in sporadic attacks by
the Tigers.
In what was the largest number of IPKF casualties since the
commencement of the offensive six days earlier 22 IPKF soldiers were
killed and four injured in twin landmine explosions in Eravur and Jaffna
.In addition 17 Indian soldiers were reported missing believed have been
captured by the Tigers.They were to met with a gruesome fate
subsequently as the fighting escalated.
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A victim of
Tiger atrocities |
Further to this the Tigers also ambushed a group of Indian soldiers
who tracked down the location of the landmine in Eravur in a deserted
house.
Not stopping at this the LTTE killing spree extended to Serunuwara
where 10 sinhala civilians were hacked to death with five more killed in
a landmine blast at Kituluotuwa the scene of the gruesome massacre of
three bus loads of passengers two months earlier.
or the first time the dead bodies of the Indian soldiers who perished
in battle with the LTTE were airlifted to India for the final rites.
The tally of dead bodies was to multiply with the Tigers intensifying
attacks with each passing day.One recalls the first casualties among the
Indian soldiers were buried in the North with full military honours
attended by the top military brass on both sides.The State media at the
time went to town giving maximum publicity to this event to portray the
picture that India too was making sacrifices and in effect fighting our
own war, in a bid to counter the massive anti- Government sentiments
against the presence of the Indian Army on Sri Lankan soil.
But the fate of the Indian soldiers were viewed with wry resignation
by a majority of Lankan at the time, who felt that India was getting
it’s just deserts for it’s role in arming and nurturing the Tamil Tigers
on it’s soil.
The supreme irony of this situation was not lost on many in a
scenario where the Sri Lankan soldiers while being confined to barracks
the tigers were being hunted by the very forced who trained and armed
the outfit to fight the Lankan Army.
India was to lose 1400 of it’s soldiers by the time the IPKF left the
country in 1989.But the LTTE was still intact as fighting unit.A mission
unaccomplished and the sacrifice in vain.
Saturday October 17, 1987:
India brings her dead and wounded soldiers back from Lanka
India has begun bringing home dead and wounded soldiers from Sri
Lanka, where its troops and Tamil rebels are locked in a bloody battle
for Jaffna, Defence Ministry officials said here today.
Wounded soldiers have been flown out of the Northern Jaffna peninsula
and hospitalised in South India as military hospitals near the
battlefront were not equipped to deal with such heavy casualties, they
said.
An Indian army spokesman here said attempts were being made to
contact the relatives of the dead soldiers, who will be cremated or
buried with full military honours. Some may be honoured posthumously.
Official figures up to Thursday put the Indian toll at 77 dead with
more than 200 wounded in seven days of fierce fighting with the dominant
Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) for control of their Jaffna
stronghold.
Army sources here said the army medical corps was only treating the
“walking wounded” at battlefield clinics in Jaffna and Palaly and
referring the seriously wounded to command hospitals in India.
The sources said most of the Indian casualties resulted from sniper
fire, mortar attacks or antipersonnel mines believed to have been laid
by Tamil separatists around the old Fort in Jaffna.
“They (Tamil rebels) shot us from behind a thick wall of civilian
women and children in Jaffna. We could not shoot them as civilians would
have died first,” a wounded Indian soldier said on State run television.
Other wounded soldiers in a military hospital in Madras told
television interviewers that the rebels always had the advantage of
surprise, as the troops could not tell between civilians and separatists
until they were shot at.
The Indian Defence Ministry on Thursday used civilian aircraft to
rush 2,000 more troops to reinforce the 15,000 strong Peace Keeping
Force deployed in Sri Lanka under the July 29 accord between New Delhi
and Colombo, aimed at ending four years of Tamil separatist violence.
New Delhi, Friday, AFP
Saturday October 17, 1987:
Tigers kill 8 civilians, 3 policemen
William DE ALWIS
LTTE gunmen yesterday killed 11 more civilians in the Trincomalee
area of the Eastern Province, bringing the total number massacred during
the last two days to 24. Among the dead were three policemen on leave,
official sources said. There were three women among the victims.
An official spokesman said four of those killed were employees of the
Ceylon Mineral Sands Corporation at Pulmoddai.
The atrocity, committed in the wake of LTTE leader Prabhakaran’s
urgent appeals for an IPKF ceasfire, pursued through his emissaries in
India, only served to prove the total inconsistency and insincerity of
the LTTE, observers in Colombo said.
Indian TV Dooradarshan reported yet another war crime committed by
the group defending itself in Jaffna’s city limits. The State television
said a five-year old child had been used to place a grenade intended to
kill advancing IPKF forces. The group was continuing to use women and
children as a human shield, to protect themselves, Dooradarshan said.
The massacre of 11 civilians yesterday morning at the 12th Milepost on
the Pulmoddai-Padaviya road was described as yet another futile exercise
indulged in by a group of killers-on-the-run. They stopped a bus and
having sorted out its occupants, shot down 11 Sinhalese commuters. Six
others who were Tamil and Muslim were asked to go on their way.
On Thursday morning, LTTE gunmen slaughtered 10 Sinhalese on the
Allai-Kantalai road.
Yesterday four of the injured - two women and two men - died in
hospital.
Tomorrow: LTTE landmine kills 40 Tamils
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