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S Lankan army moves on rebels

Sri Lanka's military said yesterday it was advancing "slowly but surely" on a rebel-held enclave in the east, where a week of near-daily shelling and air strikes has sent hundreds of families fleeing, putting pressure on already overcrowded refugee camps.

A resurgent civil conflict between ethnic Tamil rebels and the Sinhalese-dominated state has forced about 220,000 people from their homes since April, including 40,000 who fled during a fierce battle for control of Muttur, a mostly Muslim town in the east, according to the UN.

During the last week, hundreds more families have been displaced by a military push to recapture Sampur, just east of Muttur, according to Muslim Aid, which runs 11 refugee camps in nearby Kantale district.

Soldiers have advanced to about 2km outside Sampur, but have been slowed down by mines and explosive booby traps laid by the rebels, military spokesman Major Upali Rajapakse said yesterday. He said security forces continued to pound Tamil Tiger artillery bases in Sampur overnight.

"We are slowly but surely achieving our aim," he said.

The military insists that the operation to flush rebels from Sampur and four adjoining villages is based on "humanitarian grounds" so that civilians can return home.

Most refugees are packed into squalid tent camps in Kantale, where there is little privacy and the threat of upcoming monsoon rains is making resettlement a more pressing urgency.

The government, however, says Tigers have used Sampur to fire artillery and mortars across Trincomalee bay at a strategic naval base and that it is a matter of national security to reclaim it.

Sri Lanka's Muslim population has largely kept out of the country's more than two-decade conflict between the state and Tamil Tiger rebels, but because they speak Tamil, they are often suspected of being informers for both sides.

Insurgents are also accused of forcibly evicting Muslims -- the country's second largest ethnic minority after the Tamils -- from areas under their control.

A military official earlier said that all Muslims could return by today, but Muslim Aid's Ashok Ahmed said resettlement was likely to take at least a month.

He said some people have already started to return to Muttur, having weighed the unstable security situation with the risk of disease from flooding during the monsoon rains.

The top government official in Trincomalee, Major General T.T.R. De Silva, insisted Muttur was safe.

"There is no fighting, no shelling in Muttur," he said, adding that electricity, water and medical facilities have been restored and about 600 families have already returned home.

The UN refugee agency said the decision to return must be left up to the individual.

"For them to go back, they have to volunteer. If the safety is there, if they volunteer, then it's OK," Supang Sguansaitgul, the UNHCR's coordinator in Trincomalee, said.

The Tigers have been battling the government since 1983 for a separate homeland for the country's ethnic Tamil minority, who endured decades of discrimination by the majority Sinhalese.
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