14 Girls Are Among 18 Tamil Rebels Slain in Sri Lanka

Government forces raiding a rebel camp killed 18 fighters, all but four of them girls, in a gun battle Sunday on the Jaffna peninsula, an official spokesman said.

Child soldiers were leading the fighters of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam near the camp in Navatkuli, 12 miles north of the city of Jaffna, a Defense Ministry spokesman said. Soldiers discovered after the gun battle that most of the dead guerrillas were children.

“When our troops fired at the camp, they fired back, and in the fighting 18 of them were killed,” he said. “Our soldiers were surprised to see that child soldiers dominated the group.”

Children, especially girls, are among the most efficient fighters in Sri Lanka’s 17-year-old war between government forces and the Tamil rebels. They can carry bombs and infiltrate enemy lines and are often not fired at by adult soldiers.

There is no credible estimate of how many child fighters are with the Tamil rebels. But the Sri Lankan military says it often finds one or two bodies of children among 10 to 15 rebels killed in battle.

The rebels have been fighting since 1983 for an independent Tamil homeland in the north and east in a war that has killed more than 63,000 people.