Documentary : Dodging the ‘Snakes’ of Sri Lanka’s Savage War : Under fire behind rebels lines, a correspondent hugs the dirt and gets a first-hand taste of the ongoing agony in the island nation.

Twelve miles behind rebel lines, I thought we’d hit a mine.

The sudden explosion rocked the car. Then a second blast roared louder and much closer. Flaming shrapnel streamed beside the road. It was no mine.

“Rockets!,” shouted James Pringle of The Times of London. From the front seat, I could see yellow flashes from a Sri Lankan Air Force helicopter hovering high and in front of our car.

Machine gun fire splattered on the road, kicking up little plumes of dust. Our driver froze, braking the car. “Go! Go for the trees!,” Pringle yelled at him.

The gunship kept firing as we sped to this village. As Pringle jumped out, bullets stitched the dirt behind him. I dived for a roadside ditch. Our driver ran by seconds later. Two shots had pierced the car roof, and a third hit the trunk near the gas tank. Amazingly, he wasn’t hurt.

The chopper circled and strafed for 10 minutes, shredding branches and leaves from overhead trees. Then it just circled. Finally it left.

Strange thoughts enter your mind when you are rocketed and machine gunned for the first time. My first thought was of snakes.

Sri Lanka has some of the world’s most poisonous snakes. In recent days, I had seen wild elephants, wild boar, monkeys and mongooses. Down in my ditch, hugging the moist earth, I worried about vipers, cobras and kraits.

Ironically, we were in the area to meet Tigers--the separatist guerrilla army known as the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam.

We were not hurt. Nor were four other Western journalists who were strafed by air force helicopters outside a Tamil refugee camp in two separate attacks in the next two days. What we got instead was a first hand taste of the terror, confusion and bloodshed of one of the world’s most savage guerrilla wars: a seven-year old conflict pitting minority Tamils seeking independence from the Sinhalese-run government.

It is a war where civilians on both sides are burned and beheaded and where a member of the rebel “baby brigade,” barely bigger than his AK-47, proudly showed the cyanide vial he’s pledged to swallow if he is captured.

“Four seconds!,” said 15-year-old Patmadas with a grin. “We die in just four seconds.”

And it is a war where pathetic streams of panic-stricken refugees, clutching children and tattered sacks, flee down mined roads in a no-man’s-land where even the coconut trees are booby trapped.

“We are so frightened,” one Tamil woman cried, as her family rushed along near here. “But we hear the army is coming.”

Tens of thousands have died in almost constant fighting here over the last decade. At least 1,500 more are reported to have died or disappeared just since June 11 when the Tigers suddenly overran scores of police posts and attacked 10 army camps and four navy bases in the north and eastern provinces in this West Virginia-size nation. The attacks, after a 13-month cease-fire, sparked a new cycle of massacres and reprisals.

Tamils are only 18% of Sri Lanka’s 16 million people. But, as is the case in the Middle East, in an ethnic war with ancient roots, every atrocity is justified as revenge.

In Ingineyagala, about 50 miles south of here, a shouting Sinhalese mob bearing hoes, machetes and cans of kerosene brutally killed 26 Tamil men, women and children the night after the Tigers’ June 11 attacks.

One survivor, Mahen Keliamma, said she ran to hide in the forest with her three youngest children but couldn’t save her 8-year-old son, Mannivannan, from the mob. Later his burned body was found. “They had doused him with kerosene and set him ablaze,” She told reporters tearfully in a refugee camp. Her mother, brother and sister also died. “Some were hacked to death and others burned alive,” she said.

In Amparai, the district seat, a police superintendent who identified himself only as Noordin confirmed the massacre but shrugged when asked why the local police had done nothing to stop the mob. “Very busy,” he said.

Further north, in Trincomalee, it was the police who took revenge. Police-led mobs of Sinhalese burned block after block of Tamil shops and homes in the famed port town and rounded up hundreds of Tamil men. At least 14 died, including an invalid who burned to death in his home.

One white-haired Tamil businessman stood in the charred ruins of his store and pleaded for help. “If I am taken tomorrow and shot, who can my family complain to? No one!” he said, fear in his eyes.

In another village, Palaturuella, a roadside shopkeeper served Cokes and said calmly that the Tigers had killed 60 Sinhalese there three years ago, including his wife and six children.

“They cut their heads off,” he explained.

Even the wildlife has not escaped. The Tigers recently used rocket-propelled grenades to shoot 17 elephants in a southern game preserve, according to one diplomat. The elephants disrupted construction of fortified log bunkers, he said.

Reports from Jaffna, the Tigers’ northern stronghold, sound even more surreal. Like a scene from an old film, several hundred soldiers and police are under rebel siege in a star-shaped, 350-year-old, Dutch colonial fort surrounded by a water-filled moat.

Running out of food, medicine and ammunition, they have fought off attacks from teen-age Tiger suicide squads sent to scale the ancient ramparts with explosives strapped to them, according to the military. Other tigers have tried to tunnel inside. After dropping leaflets to warn civilians, the air force began bombing and strafing outside the fort last week. They destroyed dozens of shops in the city center and damaged a deserted hospital and girl’s orphanage, according to two Western visitors. Casualties were reported in the hundreds. The Tigers’ leader, Velupillai Prabakaran, reportedly is directing the siege. Short and stocky, Prabakaran is said to be a crack shot, able to hit a cigarette with a pistol at 100 paces. He also is known for his collection of Clint Eastwood video cassettes.

The government’s Sinhalese defense minister, Ranjan Wijeratne, is white-haired and fiery. “I want Prabakaran’s head,” he announced dramatically last week in Colombo, the capital.

At a press conference, Wijeratne also invited foreign journalists to visit the eastern war zone. The area was secure, he said. He said nothing about helicopters.

Pringle, 53, a veteran correspondent who covered the Vietnam War, wanted to investigate, and so did I. So we joined forces.

Police superintendent Noordin signed our pass in Amparai, 220 miles east of Colombo. He also promised to warn the air force chief in Batticaloa that we were coming through Tiger territory in a red Mitsubishi. He says now he never made the call.

Early Monday morning, we tied a white flag to the car antenna and crossed the last army line at Maha Oya. A mile later we got out and began to walk. That way the Tigers could see us, and deactivate command-controlled mines.

Two barefoot guerrillas eyed us nervously at the first Tiger checkpoint. After radioing in, they said to go to Ayittiyanalai, 12 miles to the northeast, to meet their leader.

Drive carefully, they added, since the roadsides are mined.

Down the road, a squad of 12- to 15-year-old Tigers stopped us to chat. Laden with grenades, they grinned and showed their cyanide necklaces. Another five youths, camped at the St. Paul’s Day Care Center, also pulled us over.

“Don’t worry,” said one Tiger with a smile.

Minutes later, on a deserted stretch of road, we were rocketed and strafed by the air force helicopter.

When it was over, we were shaken but unhurt. And none of the villagers was hurt. They just wanted us to leave before the helicopter came back. We wanted the same thing.

That night, back in Colombo, Wijeratne told me that the pilot probably thought we were Tigers cadre. “It was a mistake,” he said gruffly.

With a bloody civil war now raging, no one has admitted as much about the agony of Sri Lanka.