Sri Lanka’s army chief said on Monday his forces have wiped out the conventional military capability of the Tamil Tigers, but that they needed another year to totally defeat the rebels.
Lieutenant General Sarath Fonseka said the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) guerrillas were no longer able to resist security forces using conventional tactics and were resorting to hit-and-run attacks.
”From about the beginning of the year, the LTTE has lost its conventional capability,” Fonseka told Colombo-based foreign correspondents. ”In less than one year, the LTTE will lose the present capability too”.
He said security forces, who are on a major offensive to capture the rebel-held north, needed at least a year to complete the job.
Fonseka said security forces had just wrested control over the entire coastal district of Mannar, along the north-western sea board of the island, after nine months of fighting which claimed the lives of 170 government troops.
During the same period, the Tigers lost at least 2 000 fighters, Fonseka said, while revising upwards the current Tiger strength to 5 000 combatants. He admitted that previous military estimates of the Tiger strength had been too low.
He said the guerrillas had also been able to recruit more fighters despite losing an estimated 9 000 cadres — according to the military — since August 2006 when security forces stepped up an offensive.
During the same period, the military lost 1 700 soldiers killed and another 4 000 wounded, Fonseka said.
The rebels have not released their estimate of casualties. Figures from either side cannot be independently verified.
Since July last year, security forces have been trying to dismantle the de facto separate state the guerrillas are maintaining in the north of the country.
Fonseka said progress had been deliberately slow.
For the first time in the decades-old conflict, he said the Sri Lankan army was working according to an ”overall military plan” which involved killing as many LTTE fighters as possible.
”We don’t go for the territory, we go for the kill,” he said. – AFP
