The Tamil Tiger rebels on Saturday called a defiant air raid on the Sri Lankan capital a success, despite the planes missing their stated targets the night before.
The surprise attack late on Friday by two small Tiger air craft set off hails of anti-aircraft fire across Colombo. One slammed into the main government tax office in central Colombo, killing at least two people and wounding 53, the military said.
The other plane was shot down and crashed in a marsh outside the international airport — site of the Tiger air wing’s first strike in 2007. State TV showed triumphant soldiers around the bullet-riddled fuselage of the small plane and its dead pilot.
The attack was the latest proof of the Tigers’ ability to strike far from the war zone, where troops have rapidly encircled them in just 87 square kilometres of jungle and are within reach of ending a separatist war that began in 1983.
The Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) in a news release said the raid targeted Sri Lanka’s air force headquarters in Colombo and airbase at the international airport, pro-rebel website www.TamilNet.com reported.
TamilNet said the mission was flown by ”Black Air Tigers”, or suicide pilots, and said they had carried out successful air raids.
Both planes came close to their targets. The tax office is near air force headquarters, and the crash site of the other was near the boundary of the airbase.
TamilNet showed the men it said were the pilots smiling, with Tiger leader Vellupillai Prabhakaran standing in the middle with his arms around them. The website said the picture was taken before the mission, but did not give a specific time.
Friday’s raid also showed that Sri Lanka’s military could down planes from a ramshackle air squadron that had flown nine previous sorties since debuting in 2007.
Though it said it had downed one plane in September, the wreckage was never recovered. The seeming inability of the air force to stop the small planes was a source of longstanding embarrassment and frustration to the government.
Verge of defeat
The LTTE is on the verge of defeat with more than 50 000 soldiers surrounding them in the northern war zone, and where the military said heavy fighting was ongoing.
”Fighting is going on. Yesterday we recovered 10 LTTE bodies in Puthukudyiruppu,” military spokesperson Brigadier Udaya Nanayakkara said, refering to last town the rebels hold. ”There were heavy confrontations.”
Although most of LTTE’s territory has been taken by the rapid military advance in the last year, troops have found seven airstrips but no planes. But the planes are small enough to take off from a dirt road.
The fleet of propeller-driven planes is believed to be the only combat air wing operated by an insurgent group or any group on US and EU terrorism lists, on which the LTTE appears.
Sri Lanka’s military has said the Tigers are flying three single-engine Zlin-143 light aircraft, believed smuggled on to the island in pieces and reassembled.
It is just one of many warfare innovations the Tigers demonstrated in a conflict that has killed 70 000 people and is Asia’s longest-running. The Tigers invented the suicide jacket — a bomb-laden vest — and used it in hundreds of bombings. – Reuters