Sri Lankan troops fighting Tamil rebels took full control yesterday of the highly strategic Elephant Pass, a causeway linking the Jaffna peninsula with the northern mainland, a government official said.
The capture of the pass, which the Tamil Tigers held since April 2000, is another huge blow to the movement after the fall of their political capital Kilinochchi last week.
It means the military now controls a 142km stretch of the vital A-9 highway and can supply troops and nearly half a million civilians in Jaffna, the government spokesman said.
He said the causeway fell to government soldiers advancing northward from Kilinochchi and another column that moved south from earlier army defenses.
“They have established full control over Elephant Pass today after entering the south of the area four days ago,” he said.
There was no comment from the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE).
The Tigers had dislodged the military from Elephant Pass in 2000 and held a 100km stretch of the A-9 route, forcing the military to use expensive air and sea transport instead to supply Jaffna.
Officials said Sri Lankan President Mahinda Rajapakse was likely to issue a statement late yesterday congratulating troops for retaking Elephant Pass and establishing control over the A-9, which would now serve as a main supply route.
The Sri Lankan military launched its biggest-ever ground offensive against the LTTE in March 2007, since when the rebels have seen their territory shrink rapidly.
They are now almost totally confined to the jungle district of Mullaittivu in the northeast, where some 300,000 civilians are also living.
Separately yesterday, four civilians and three security personnel were killed in Trincomalee when a powerful roadside bomb struck their bus in an ambush by suspected Tiger rebels.
A military official said troops were escorting the bus when it was hit.
North Korean leader Kim Jong-un sent Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) greetings with what appeared to be restrained rhetoric that comes as Pyongyang moves closer to Russia and depends less on its long-time Asian ally. Kim wished “the Chinese people greater success in building a modern socialist country,” in a reply message to Xi for his congratulations on North Korea’s birthday, the state-run Korean Central News Agency reported yesterday. The 190-word dispatch had little of the florid language that had been a staple of their correspondence, which has declined significantly this year, an analysis by Seoul-based specialist service NK Pro showed. It said
On an island of windswept tundra in the Bering Sea, hundreds of miles from mainland Alaska, a resident sitting outside their home saw — well, did they see it? They were pretty sure they saw it — a rat. The purported sighting would not have gotten attention in many places around the world, but it caused a stir on Saint Paul Island, which is part of the Pribilof Islands, a birding haven sometimes called the “Galapagos of the north” for its diversity of life. That is because rats that stow away on vessels can quickly populate and overrun remote islands, devastating bird
‘CLOSER TO THE END’: The Ukrainian leader said in an interview that only from a ‘strong position’ can Ukraine push Russian President Vladimir Putin ‘to stop the war’ Decisive actions by the US now could hasten the end of the Russian war against Ukraine next year, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said on Monday after telling ABC News that his nation was “closer to the end of the war.” “Now, at the end of the year, we have a real opportunity to strengthen cooperation between Ukraine and the United States,” Zelenskiy said in a post on Telegram after meeting with a bipartisan delegation from the US Congress. “Decisive action now could hasten the just end of Russian aggression against Ukraine next year,” he wrote. Zelenskiy is in the US for the UN
A 64-year-old US woman took her own life inside a controversial suicide capsule at a Swiss woodland retreat, with Swiss police on Tuesday saying several people had been arrested. The space-age looking Sarco capsule, which fills with nitrogen and causes death by hypoxia, was used on Monday outside a village near the German border. The portable human-sized pod, self-operated by a button inside, has raised a host of legal and ethical questions in Switzerland. Active euthanasia is banned in the country, but assisted dying has been legal for decades. On the same day it was used, Swiss Department of Home