Sri Lanka rebels launch air and land attack, five airmen killed

Sri Lanka rebels launch air and land attack, five airmen killed

	Published : Mon, 22 Oct 2007 05:47 By : Agencies Print this Story

COLOMBO (Thomson Financial) - Five Sri Lankan airmen were killed as Tamil Tiger rebels launched an unprecedented air and land attack on a northern military base, officials and a pro-rebel website said today.

Rebels flying light aircraft bombed the Anuradhapura airbase under cover of darkness, killing one serviceman and wounding 18 others and damaging two stationary helicopter gunships, the defence ministry said.

Four other airmen were killed when a Bell 212 helicopter, flown in as back-up during the 'heavy' assault, went down due to a technical fault, a ministry statement said.

'The LTTE (Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam) have infiltrated the airbase and also dropped about two bombs on the airbase and damaged two Mi-24 helicopter gunships,' military spokesman Brigadier Udaya Nanayakkara told Agence France-Presse.

Other military sources said two fixed-wing planes parked at the base, 212 kilometres north of the capital Colombo, were hit.

The pro-rebel Tamilnet.com website said it was the Tigers' first combined ground and air raid. They caused panic with air attacks on the capital Colombo on April 28.

'This is the first time the Tigers have combined both air and ground attack in a raid,' the website said.

The latest attack came after a conference on combating terrorism ended in Sri Lanka over the weekend, with experts urging Colombo to hammer out a political settlement to end decades of bloodshed.

Former Indian army chief General V. P. Malik said Sri Lanka needed to resist the temptation to attempt to go in for the kill -- and rather work towards reviving the moribund peace process.

'There are no quick solutions to counter terrorism... the military can only create conditions wherein the adversary is inclined to or feel it necessary to come to the negotiating table,' Malik said.

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