COLOMBO: Tamil militants ambushed and killed 24° in soldiers in northwest Sri Lanka on August 17. It was among the most severe losses that the Indian Army has suffered in a single encounter.
About 45,000 Indian soldiers are in the north and east of Sri Lanka under a 1987 accord with the Sri Lankan Government to bring peace to the region, where ethnic Tamils have been waging a separatist campaign.
An Indian spokesman here said the Tamils had opened fire with rocket propelled grenades, rocket launchers and machine guns on the post from the hospital. He said the Indian troops “were hampered by the knowledge that there were patients and staff inside the building at the time and used only small arms in response.”
The spokesman, Gurjeet Singh, said several groups of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam slipped into the hospital and buildings around the post under cover of darkness in a thickly populated area of Mannar, 120 miles north of Colombo, the capital.
The spokesman said that a search was under way in Mannar and that rebel causalities in the incident were not known. He said it was the second times this month that the Tamil Tigers had used “a human shield” to fight the Indians. The Liberation Tigers group has said that more than 70 people all civilians, were killed in a massacre by the Indians, a charge which New Delhi has strongly denied.
In the bitter campaign against each other both the Tamils and the Indians have taken heavy losses. Indian forces have suffered at least 4,000 casualties, including 1,000 dead in the longest war the Indian army has fought since independence. India and Sri Lanka are currently in a dispute about the timing of the withdrawal of these troops.
Article extracted from this publication >> August 25, 1989
