??????? ????| PAKISTAN LEDGER | ???????? ????? | September 10th, 2008  | Moin Ansari | ???? ??????? |  | RUPEE NEWS | Moin Ansari | September 10th, 2008 | ???? ??????? | ????? ????? |The LTTE is surrounded by the Lankan forces. The Last 5000 LTTE terrorists survive on an Indian supply chain that provides oxygen to the Tamils and arms to the Tamil Tigers. The Lankan government is getting thousands of tons of Pakistani ammunition and Pakistan has promised Lanka a steady supply for the next few months ’till the Lankans achieve victory against one of he most ruthless and well equipped terror organizaitons in the world.

Sri Lanka Rebels Weakened, Still a Threat, Defense Analysts Say By Shani Raja

Sept. 2 (Bloomberg) — Sri Lanka’s Tamil Tigers, watching their fiefdom in the north shrink under daily army attacks, showed by last week’s air raid on a naval base they still pose a military threat, defense analysts said.

The air unit’s strike on the eastern port of Trincomalee came after the government said defeats in the north and east have almost broken the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam, which has fought for a separate homeland for 25 years.

“The government has succeeded in significantly weakening the Tigers,” said Amantha Perera, a defense columnist for the Sunday Leader newspaper, based in the capital, Colombo. Still, “they have a hardcore fighting unit that even by conservative estimates could run into several thousands.”

The Tamil Tigers have been under siege in their northern bases since they lost control of the east to the army in July last year and the government ended a 2002 cease-fire in January. The group, which managed to repulse a major army offensive in the northern Wanni region in the late 1990s, operates from bases deep in jungle areas.

Government troops are advancing in Kilinochchi district, where the LTTE has its headquarters, and Mullaitivu to its east. They are the last remaining districts of Wanni that the Tamil Tigers still control, the Defense Ministry said on its Web site last week.

Strike Back

The Aug. 20 air raid “shows the rebels’ ability to attack hasn’t been eliminated,” Perera said. The government blamed the LTTE for a bomb explosion in a commercial district of Colombo at the weekend that injured more than 40 people.

The LTTE has called up reserves and ex-fighters and is training civilians in Wanni to fight the army, according to Sri Lankan press reports.

“The guerrillas have demonstrated their ability, with primitive air capability, to infiltrate highly defended areas to take on military targets,” Iqbal Athas wrote in his weekly defense column in Sri Lanka’s Sunday Times newspaper.

The rebels may deploy the aircraft as “flying bombs” as they become more desperate, he said.

Military operations along the northwestern coast have restricted the rebels’ ability to smuggle in supplies from southern India, Perera said. The army in June took control of the main rice-producing area in Mannar in the northwest.

The LTTE may have fewer than 5,000 fighters left, said Sunil Jayasiri, a defense correspondent for the Daily Mirror newspaper, citing information from unidentified army officials.

Roam Freely

Some defense analysts have put the figure as high as 10,000 and say the Tigers are able to roam freely in most of the 4,000 square kilometers (1,544 square miles) of jungle terrain comprising the Kilinochchi and Mullaitivu districts.

The army last month captured the northern town of Tunukkai, which Jayasiri said enables soldiers to target the LTTE’s headquarters in Kilinochchi town.

“It’s still possible the Tigers are allowing the army to come into their territory before launching counterattacks,” Jayasiri said. “But if the Sri Lankan forces can capture Kilinochchi town, the rest of the Wanni will easily fall into government control.”

In the late 1990s, the army attempted to carve out a supply route from the south to support as many as 40,000 soldiers operating in the Jaffna peninsula in northern Sri Lanka.

The fighting, along the A-9 north-south highway that snakes through the center of Wanni, left thousands of government troops and rebels dead.

“As the troops are poised to move eastwards, bitter battles loom large” in the current fighting, wrote the Sunday Times’ Athas, who is also a correspondent for the UK-based Jane’s Defence Weekly.

Conventional Army

The Tamil Tigers have lost the ability to fight as a conventional army, Army Chief Sarath Fonseka told reporters in July, adding that the military is making progress toward eliminating the Tigers by mid-2009. The LTTE may continue to operate as a guerrilla outfit, he said.

The military operations are preventing supplies, including kerosene for fires, reaching displaced people sheltering in Kilinochchi district, TamilNet reported last month. The International Committee of the Red Cross said Aug. 14 that tens of thousands of people had fled their homes in recent weeks.

Sri Lanka’s air force has begun dropping leaflets in rebel- held parts of Kilinochchi and Mullaitivu districts advising residents to flee to government-controlled territory for their own safety, the British Broadcasting Corp. reported Aug. 29, citing residents of Kilinochchi town and an air force spokesman.

The LTTE in recent days handed out leaflets in Kilinochchi calling on people to build bunkers as fighting escalates, the BBC reported yesterday.

Villagers Displaced

The army offensives and bombing raids have forced more than 113,000 people from their homes in northern villages, the LTTE’s Peace Secretariat said last month. The group has accused the air force of dropping bombs in civilian areas, a charge the government rejects.

The air raid on Trincomalee was the first rebel aerial attack on a major target since an assault on an air force base in the north a year ago. The aircraft dropped two bombs on the navy camp after being driven away from the dockyards, Sri Lanka’s Defense Ministry said last week, describing it as an “abortive” mission.

The main target may have been the navy’s largest troop carrier, named Jetliner, which was docked at the port and waiting to transport troops to Jaffna the following day, according to Athas. The ship is able to carry as many as 3,000 people, along with cargo, he said.

To contact the reporter on this story: Shani Raja in Sydney at sraja4@bloomberg.net