74 soldiers captured alive, taken to Tiger-controlled and massacred

By Malathi Srikumaran

What did really happen in the recent Muhamalai and Kilali operations? Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam [LTTE] media persons and their web sites claim that the LTTE won the attack and severely defeated the Sri Lankan Army. Many of the international news media took off from there, using the LTTE comments. They obviously needed sensational stuff.

They wrote their stories based on LTTE provided data and virtually ignored the reports of the Sri Lankan Government, the Armed Forces dispatches or any other opinions or sources that were different from that of the LTTE or countered them. There were certainly some reverses for the Sri Lankan Army defenses at Muhamalai and Kilali but not the way the media had reported or to the extent it was claimed.

Tigers were massing up troops to launch an attack on the army ahead of the Sri Lankan Security Force's Forward Defense Line [FDL] at Muhamalai and Kilali last Saturday and a heavy battle continued until Wednesday night when over 74 bodies of the Sri Lankan soldiers were handed over through the ICRC.

Reliable sources from the Tiger-controlled area suspected that during the retaliatory attacks these soldiers, soon after they were captured alive were brutally massacred by the Tigers violating with impunity the Geneva Convention on prisoners of war. They paid scant respect to all norms of decency, compassion and even human rights.

We cannot betray our sources for obvious reasons and also for the reasons of security. However, even a cursory glance through the pro-LTTE website tamilnet.com will give some pertinent clues. It claimed that the Tigers said they had captured one soldier, Samantha Weerasinghe {18) wounded in action. He was reported as in Tiger custody and rushed to a hospital in Kilinochchi. This was reported in the Tamil net website 11 October (Wednesday) at 13.48 GMT.

But our sources suspecting Tigers having captured more than 75 soldieries inside the Tiger-controlled area and after brutally murdering nearly all of them had gone to a secret location carrying the dead with them. Only one person was brought out alive along with his profile to win a favourable media focus for them claiming that all the others were killed in action.

Our informant said a lot of soldiers of the same brigade who, while retuning to the barracks after fighting valiantly in the mission, were trapped by the Tigers and had to surrender. Some however escaped and the others were taken prisoners and were marched into the Tiger-controlled area. They were certainly alive and unarmed at that time.

Later, after the operation the Tigers announced they were handing over the dead bodies of 74 soldiers through the ICRC. But defense sources said 78 soldiers were missing and 55 were killed in that incident. Also more than three hundreds soldiers were wounded. This has been confirmed as 138 with 74 of them killed by the Tigers after they were captured alive.

As for the Tigers, 150 were killed and a large number wounded, confirmed the same report.