Sri Lankan Forces Claim Tiger Sea Base Destroyed

Sir Lanka's air force said today it had destroyed the main sea operations base of the Tamil Tigers separatist group.

The air raid on the base, near the town of Mullaitivu in northern Sri Lanka, destroyed fuel stocks and started a major fire, an air force spokesman said.

"We now understand that the base was the headquarters of the Sea Tigers [the group's marine operation] and had a fuel storage tank beside other facilities," said Group Captain Ajantha Silva.

However, the Tamil Tigers said the raid had instead hit the offices of White Pigeon, a local charity that makes prosthetic limbs for landmine victims.

"It's not a headquarters. It's a White Pigeon office that is damaged," a spokeswoman told the Reuters news agency. "There is no Sea Tiger building in the area where the attack took place. It is entirely a civilian area."

The Sea Tigers are renowned for launching suicide attacks against the Sri Lankan navy by ramming explosives-laden boats into ships.

Today's raid could have a significant impact on the group's supply chain, given that much of its arms, fuel and medicines arrives by sea.

The attack follows an upsurge in violence this week in the east of the country, where the Tigers have spent 35 years fighting for an autonomous homeland for the regional ethnic Tamil minority, as they have in the north.

On Monday 16 people died when a bomb exploded on a civilian bus as it passed through a checkpoint near the town of Ampara, in the far east of the country.

According to the military, 23 separatist fighters were killed in clashes that began late on Monday in the eastern province of Batticaloa.

And government soldiers yesterday killed four Tamil rebels in clashes in the Jaffna peninsula, in the far north, the Tigers' main stronghold.

President Mahinda Rajapaksa's government has pledged to destroy all Tiger military assets, raising fears of a major escalation of violence.

More than 60,000 people have died since the Tigers, officially called the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam, began their campaign for an independent homeland for the country's 3.1 million Tamils, who complain of having faced decades of discrimination from the majority Sinhalese population.

A Norwegian-brokered ceasefire signed in 2002 temporarily ended the fighting, but more than 4,000 people have died since late 2005, when violence flared up again. Both sides still claim to be abiding by the truce.

The Mullaitivu area, where today's air raid took place, is believed to be the home of Vellupillai Prabhakaran, the reclusive founder and leader of the Tigers.

Among the tactics he pioneered was the use of a suicide squad, known as the Black Tigers, as early as 1987.