Tuesday, December 4, 2007

LTTE Team Ambushed at Yala

An 8-man Team of Commandos observed and engaged a 12-man team of Tigers in Sector 2 Yala several hours ago injuring at least four tigers. One Commando has been injured in the confrontation. A second team of Commandos have taken over the pursuit of the fleeing Tigers. More updates on that later.

6 comments:

The Writer said...

ha ha thats the way i like it
ha ha
thats the way i like it

Unknown said...

DW...isn't block 2 of yala open for civilians for safaris etc???
Must be damn hard to track down such a small team most probably only armed with light/medium weapons etc in such a huge land area...
It must be very very tough to track em down without drawing fire from the enemy... and with all the fleeing and jungle marathon's ltte have been doing past few months...i'm sure they are far superior to SLDF at running away from battle :)

CakeBoy said...

Gents. Out of the topic, but I've noticed the following

LTTE Deaths 2007

http://www.tamilnet.com/art.html?catid=13&artid=23869

From 27th November 1982 – 20th November 2007 = 19877

They claim 954 LTTE’rs KIA, in the article. However;

LTTE Deaths 2006

http://www.tamilnet.com/art.html?catid=13&artid=20401

From 27th November 1982 -20th of November 2006 = 18742 Tigers have died

Excuse my maths, but surely 19877 – 18742 = 1135 (and not 954???)
So why the discrepancy of 181 cadres? (1135-954). LTTE telling porkies again? Deliberately understating their losses for this year or something?

LTTE Deaths 2005

In the above linked article in tamilnet, they further say 818 cadres died in 2005 -2006 ‘season’.

Up to 15th November 2005 the number killed was 17903 according to http://www.island.lk/2005/11/26/news13.html (slight discrepancy again 839 deaths compared to 818 claimed for that year)

Let’s put this down to human error on the part of the LTTE in being unable to do a simple subtraction and not a case of creative accounting on their part (i.e. 818+954=1772 deaths claimed in 2 years, compared to 19877-17903=1974 actual, according to their own cumulative totals each year). Some contradiction of their own figures or what!!

What is interesting though is, even going on the LTTE provided (unreliable) figures, some 1974 cadres have been ‘liberated’, in 2 years since the collapse of the ceasefire.

Which is 19 cadres approximately, killed every week.

If you just consider the figures for 2006-2007, where there has been an intensification of the war, this figure goes up to 22 LTTE cadres killed every week.

*Note, the LTTE figures do not include those ‘permanently out of action’ injured cadres . That would be interesting reading.....

* What would also be interesting reading is the number of cadres the LTTE killed/lost from the Mahattaya and Karuna splits and fighting.

Something else that is interesting on the breakdown of 19877 (this year’s updated figures)deaths
7,161 ‘war heroes’ were from Jaffna,
5,002 from Batticaloa-Ampaa'rai,
4,467 from Vanni (Vavuniyaa, Ki'linochchi and Mullaiththeevu districts),
1,782 from Trincomalee
1,139 from Mannaar

Which is a total of 19551. So where did the other 326 cadres come from?

The hill country (i.e. estate tamils), Colombo or the South? 326 over 25 years is not a lot, and we may be overestimating the so-called support with alleged cadres from the hill country – according to the diaspora (that’s if you can trust the above breakdown – it could always be deliberately misleading).

However in conclusion, IMHO, what the SLA forces need to do is up the killing rate. Wounding as many LTTEr’s would be a bonus too, to push their support/health services to breaking point and for also causing maximum demoralisation to the remaining cadres/ and an increasingly disgruntled wanni populace. Then again 2000 LTTE deaths minimum (and acknowledged by the LTTE) in 2 years of Eelam War IV, is pretty good going ;-).

Going on present trends, we should be able to hit at least 3500-4000 kills in 3 years, by November next year. Remember, the 2000 odd deaths in the last 2 years were from a so-called ‘strategically withdrawing’ force in the east, and not one that one that has the luxury to run anywhere else in the north.....

Sounds like Velu was not joking – it is starting to look more and more like the ‘final war’ for the LTTE after all eh!

Note, the above is purely based on LTTE supplied figures and make no allowances for the underestimating of their actual losses, which are probably much higher. Like someone said, add the GOSL claimed kills and the LTTE claimed losses, and divide the total by 2 to get an accurate estimate.....

Renegade! said...

cakeboy,interesting analysis!
defencewire,this team of tigers,were they a specialised 'commando' group,from maybe black leopards,charles anthony,or just regular cadres?

By the way,i thoght that about 1000 troops have already been deployed in the yala area..it's a large area,i know,with lots of interesting wild-life.so,i guess next time we go on a visit to yala,we can a see another species of tiger-the 2-legged variety(unless,of course the LTTE fellows were crawling)!!Lol

Srilankan said...

Well done ARMY very well done!!!

Defencewire said...

ranil,
You are correct. Army's small teams were searching for trhis team from the time of the last attack (15 Oct). This was the first sighting. They have done a good job in predicting their movements.

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