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Sri Lankan Air Force bombs key rebel target
According to the Media Centre for National Security, the air raids took place at about 9.00 am at Verugal in Batticaloa district.
Sri Lankan Air Force conducted an airstrike early on Tuesday at a strategic target of the rebel Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) in the east, the military said.
According to the Media Centre for National Security, the air raids took place at about 9.00 am at Verugal in Batticaloa district.
"It had been identified that this location was used by Tiger rebels as a rallying point to organise attacks on security forces," the centre said in a statement.
It said that the LTTE had posted cadres there with the intention of attacking security forces detachments north of Verugal.
According to official estimates, the violence since December 2005 has cost over 3,800 lives and has undermined the efforts of the Norwegian peace facilitators to try and broker an end to the island's over two-decade-old ethnic separatist conflict.
The LTTE rebels seek to set up a separate homeland for the Tamils in the north and eastern provinces.
Over 64,000 people were killed in the conflict between the mid 1980s and 2002 when the stalled Norwegian peace facilitation began.
