Sri Lanka’s armed forces are massing troops and have weapons for further ground offensives against the Tigers while continuing their bombardment of LTTE-controlled areas and the LTTE has put its forces in Vanni on high alert.
"We are aware that the Sri Lanka Army has amassed military hardware close to Manalaru in preparation for a major offensive towards Mullaitivu area,” Mr. S. P. Tamilselvan, Head of the LTTE’s Political Wing, said Monday.
“The consequence of this offensive will be a catastrophic bloodbath across Sri Lanka," he said.
“We warn that Colombo is courting national disaster by misinterpreting our patience for military weakness,” he said.
“Despite provocations from Colombo, we have desisted from engaging offensively against the Sri Lankan forces. We have exercised tolerance at high cost. We sincerely believe that the International Community has realized our tolerance has reached its limits.”
Mr. Tamilselvan was speaking to reporters after meeting Norwegian Ambassador Hans Brattskar in Kilinochchi Monday.
“Our forces have been placed on high alert across Vanni,” he said. “Colombo would plunge the entire island into a bloody war by engaging its troops in this dangerous exercise.”
Apart from the buildup in Manal Aru, correspondents say the Army is massing weapons and troops in Muhamalai in the Jaffna peninsula and also at Vavuniya and Omanthai.
The military’s hectic preparations come as the fifth anniversary of the 2002 ceasefire, which exists only on paper now, was marked by vehement protests by Sinhala nationalists urging hardline President Mahinda Rajapakse to tear up the agreement.
The Sri Lankan military has already declared its intent to clear the eastern province of the LTTE before attacking the Vanni, a large swathe of territory the Tigers control in the island’s north.
Emboldened by a series of retreats by the Tigers in the face of its offensives in the east over the past eight months, the Sri Lankan government has announced plans to attack Thoppigala where long-standing LTTE bases are located in thick jungles.
At the same time the military is moving vast quantities of weapons and ammunition to forward areas close to the Muhamalai frontline in the Jaffna peninsula and is doing the same near Omanthai in Vavuniya district.
Muhamalai and Omanthai are the two main entry points to the LTTE-controlled Vanni region, which President Rajapakse vowed in a speech to mark Independence Day, Feb 4, to capture within the year.
In Jaffna the military has extended hours of curfew. In addition to the 11-hour night curfew, during the day civilians are barred from major roads comprising supply routes to the Muhamalai frontline from the Palaly base complex.
The military has also imposed a peninsula wide ban on fishing until further notice.
Tuesday last week the Army began moving heavy weapons including at least fifteen Main Battle Tanks (MBTs) to the Muhamalai forward areas. Weapons and troops have been moving to the area continuously for several days, reports said.
Meanwhile the Sunday Times reported a continuing military build-up by the LTTE in and around the Jaffna peninsula also.
Newly trained LTTE cadres were being deployed in rear defences and other localities while regular cadres were being moved to frontline defended localities at Muhamalai, the paper said.
In the Batticaloa district, the military’s announcement that ‘the fall of Thoppigala is imminent’ has triggered the flight of several thousand Tamils into government-controlled areas.
An estimated 70,000 people who fled earlier Sri Lankan offensives are already struggling in squalid refugee camps.
In the run up to the publicly declared push for Toppigala, Sri Lankan troops have also begun limited operations against LTTE positions south west of Trincomalee.
Artillery and helicopter gunships have attacked LTTE camps in the jungles near the massive eastern naval base.
The military has stepped up artillery bombardment and airstrikes on western parts of Batticaloa district and the Vanni.
Villages in the LTTE-held hinterland west of the lagoon that separates it from government-controlled town are being bombarded regularly, displacing ever-increasing numbers of civilians.
Amid daily artillery and Multi-Barrel Rocket Launcher (MBRL) bombardments, Air Force jets are bomb areas further south in Vanni.
The Tigers are shelling Sri Lankan positions in Jaffna and Batticaloa in response.
This week a group of foreign Ambassadors visiting Batticaloa narrowly escaped LTTE shells which hit the military base their helicopter landed on.
US Ambassador Robert Blake and Italian Ambassador Pio Mariani,were slightly wounded when four shells exploded near the Sri Lanka Air Force (SLAF) helicopter they had alighted from. Reports said Mr. Blake’s arm was grazed by a stone or shrapnel and Mr. Mariani suffered a small cut to his scalp.
The LTTE said Sri Lanka had failed to notify it in advance of the movement of foreign diplomats into the Northeast warzones as is customary practice and had launched artillery attacks from the airfield prompting its counterfire.
