Emboldened by the Liberation Tigers’ withdrawal from the Vaharai region last week, Sri Lanka’s hardline government vowed to eradicate the LTTE and suggested the movement sues for peace.
Late last week, the LTTE pulled out of the besieged Vaharai enclave, having held out against a Sri Lankan onslaught for five months.
Sri Lankan troops moved into Vaharai as LTTE fighters retreated from the enclave into the sprawling Batticaloa hinterland, including the Toppigala jungles where major LTTE camps are based.
The LTTE withdrawal averted a bloody battle for the small strip of land hemmed in by the Indian ocean on one side and a lagoon on the other.
Had a major confrontation taken place, there is little doubt there would have been severe civilian casualties, the BBC reported.
This Monday the Sri Lankan government vowed to continue its offensives which began mid-2006 and to drive the Tigers out of the rest of their controlled areas in the east.
"The people of Vaharai have been liberated from the clutches of the terrorists," defence spokesman and government minister Keheliya Rambukwella said.
"Toppigala is a bit of a volatile area, which runs the risk of [our] forces being attacked from time to time, so we will have to eliminate that risk as well," he told Reuters.
"If tomorrow the LTTE says 'we are ready to stop hostilities and get back to the negotiating table', we will stop immediately," he added.
"If they do not, then we'll have to liberate the Tamil civilians in the east and then call (the Tigers) for negotiations."
They Tigers warned that their withdrawal in recent months from sprawling parts of the eastern province did not constitute a weakening of their striking capability.
"In the east, there is always a balance between possession of territory and fighting ability, and it may constantly change," Tiger military spokesman Rasiah Ilanthiraiyan told Reuters.
"In the context of what they have done with the ceasefire agreement, the Sri Lankan government has a big way to go to prove their commitment to any kind of negotiated settlement," he said.
Yoko Akasaka, the head of the UNHCR field office in Batticaloa town, said the civilians had started fleeing from Vaharai and moving south to Batticaloa early on Friday morning last week.
"By the time they arrived in the government-controlled towns of Mankerny, Singhapura and Ridithenna [in Batticaloa district] they were starving and exhausted," she added.
They newly displaced joining several thousand others who had already fled a few weeks ago to escape the military’s indiscriminate bombardment of the blockaded LTTE-held region.
Dr. T Varatharajah, Medical Officer At Vakarai government hospital, told the BBC that he was the last civilian to leave the former LTTE-held territory.
In the wake of sustained fighting for many months, international truce monitors say the 2002 Ceasefire Agreement (CFA) now holds only on paper.
Many Sri Lankan analysts hailed the capture of Vaharai, which Sri Lankan government said was a ‘strategic’ victory.
“The success in Vaharai is historic because it helps achieve on the ground, that which the Supreme Court did in law: the liberation of the arable East, with its rice fields, from the grip of the Tamil Eelam project,” wrote Dayan Jayatilleke.
“The success in Vaharai is further proof that President Rajapakse is a leader worthy of support.”
But other analysts, whilst noting that the LTTE’s loss of access to the coast was a setback and victory for the Sri Lankan armed forces, said the LTTE’s military capacity was largely impact, albeit concentrate in the north.
“The capture of Vakarai may not be strategically important in military terms, but it is likely to give a much-needed psychological boost to the security forces, still reeling from a deadly suicide attack on a convoy of naval sailors last year,” Ethirajan Anbarasan of the BBC Tamil service says.
Seasoned observers say that the Tigers are known for their resilience and that they will come back with some spectacular counter strikes elsewhere, he said.
“With most of their elite fighting units and weapons intact, they are not going to lie low for long.”
Some analysts said the capture of the A15 coastal road which runs from Trincomalee to Batticaloa town through Vaharai would prevent the LTTE from reinforcing its units in the Thoppigala jungles.
