Guerrillas attack navy camp in northern Sri Lanka

Guerrillas attack navy camp in northern Sri Lanka

COLOMBO (Agencies): Tamil Tiger rebels attacked a northern
navy camp on Tuesday in a lightning advance to retake their
former capital of Jaffna as pressure grew on the government to
seek military help from neighboring India and the United States.

The rebels, who had overrun the key Pallai military base over
the weekend, unleashed an intense artillery barrage on the navy
camp in a strategy to control the sea supply route, military
officials and rebel sources said.

The Defense Ministry in Colombo said the soldiers were
defending the camp barely 25 kilometers south of Jaffna.

President Chandrika Kumaratunga held a crisis meeting with her
main political opponent here on Tuesday as Tamil Tiger guerrillas
escalated attacks in the northern peninsula of Jaffna.

Opposition leader Ranil Wickremesinghe said he held an hour-
long meeting with Kumaratunga, who is also the commander-in-chief
of the armed forces, as heavy fighting raged near another coastal
base in the peninsula.

"The President briefed us on what is going on in Jaffna,"
Wickremesinghe said shortly after his meeting. "The President
told us the situation is critical."

He said they did not discuss the possibility of Sri Lanka
seeking foreign assistance in the face of the rebel advance in
the peninsula which government forces had wrested control from
the Tiger rebels in December 1995.

Meanwhile, The National Sangha Council, a group of powerful
Buddhist monks, demanded that the Indian military should
intervene to prevent the fall of Jaffna to the Liberation Tigers
of Tamil Eelam (LTTE).

The monks, who are extremely influential in a country where 76
percent of population is Buddhist, had met the Indian envoy over
the weekend and appealed for Indian military help, local
officials said on condition of anonymity.

They had strongly protested when Indian troops were sent to
Sri Lanka to disarm the LTTE under a peace accord with Colombo in
1987. The Indian troops withdrew three years later after the
government opposed their stay. India is home to 52 million Tamils
who have ties with Sri Lanka's 3.2 million Tamils.

"SOS", screamed a front-page headline in The Island, a pro-
opposition newspaper. The editorial said there was an immediate
need to seek foreign assistance if Jaffna was to be saved.

"The government should make its first appeal to India. India
may have good reasons to be reluctant to get involved in Sri
Lanka. But Indians cannot remain aloof to what is happening
across a few miles (kilometers) of sea on its southern coast."

The paper said Washington has banned the LTTE as a terrorist
organization. "Should it not help a country which it accepts to
be a democracy struggling against a terrorist organization?"
There was no comment by the U.S. embassy.

The Indian embassy too did not react to the demand for an
Indian intervention. But an official said Indian ambassador Shiv
Shankar Menon has left for New Delhi for consultations.

There has been no official Sri Lankan request either to New
Delhi or Washington.

The International Committee of the Red Cross said the rebels
handed over the bodies of 42 government soldiers killed in
Sunday's battle.

The military said 14 officers and soldiers were killed and 222
others were wounded in the battle. The rebel's clandestine Voice
of Tigers Radio said Tuesday that 10 of their combatants were
killed in the fighting.

Independent confirmation of the claim was not possible was not
possible as journalists are barred from the war front and
telephone links to the area have been cut.

The guerrillas have been fighting since 1983 to carve out
Eelam, a homeland where they say the nation's minority Tamils
will not be discriminated by the Sinhalese majority.