Sri Lankan Forces Kill 32; Copters Hit Rebel Hide-Out

Clashes between Sri Lankan security forces and Tamil militants left at least 32 rebels dead, 12 of them killed when helicopter gunships strafed a hide-out in northern Sri Lanka, a senior military official said Thursday.

The violence occurred on the second day of a 3-day-old major offensive aimed at breaking rebel control of the area surrounding a 300-year-old Dutch fort in the city of Jaffna, where 200 government troops have been trapped since mid-June.

About 1,000 Sri Lankan soldiers, backed by artillery and helicopter gunships, stormed the peninsula Wednesday and attacked the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam.

At least 20 Tigers were killed and an undetermined number of others wounded, the senior military official said.

“We have destroyed a large number of Tiger bunkers around the Jaffna fort camp, where the rebels have been harassing us for more than nine weeks,” the official said. “Seven of our soldiers were also injured during the operation.”

Military officials said the offensive was expected to continue for another day.

The Tigers have used automatic weapons and mortars in sporadic attacks on the fort, preventing government helicopters from delivering food and other supplies and from evacuating wounded soldiers.

The government has staged repeated attacks on rebel positions around the fort but has failed to bring the area under government control.

In a separate incident Wednesday, government helicopters with machine guns attacked Tiger rebel positions at Championpattu in the Elephant Pass area of the Jaffna peninsula, killing at least 12 rebels, the official said.

The attack occurred after rebels fired at two helicopters on an aerial surveillance patrol.

More than 2,600 soldiers, rebels and civilians have been killed.