OVER 50,000 people in the Vanni fled seeking safety as the Sri Lankan Army launched Operation Jayasikurui (Certain Victory) on 13 May using 20,000 troops, to open a land supply route from Vavuniya to Jaffna through territory controlled by the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE).
While troops advanced from Nochchimoddai, the last outpost from the border town of Vavuniya, along the main Jaffna road towards Omanthai, four miles away, a second column moving north-west from the Kent-Dollar Farm military base at Veli Oya in Mullaitivu District captured Nedunkerni after eight days of intense fighting.
Troop advances were preceded by shelling of Nedunkerni and Oddusuddan areas causing extensive damage to property. At least 19 civilians are reported killed including three children in Airforce bombing at Nedunkerni on 14 May. A third Army column marching north from Poovarasankulam, came under heavy attack at Kuruvikulam. The capture of Omanthai was designed to put Vavuniya beyond LTTE’s new artillery capability, military analysts say.
The Army’s advancing columns plan to link up at Puliyankulam, the junction town where the Jaffna road branches to Nedunkerni and the Tiger heartland of Mullaitivu. The capture of the Vavuniya-Jaffna and the Nedunkerni-Puliyankulam roads will isolate Mullaitivu and reduce LTTE control over the population denying manpower resources for recruitment.
In an attempt to divert attention as Jayasikurui was about to begin, LTTE’s Charles Anthony Brigade mounted an assault on the Morawewa police station on the Trincomalee-Anuradhapura border killing 15 policemen and injuring another 25. After an interval to observe the Buddhist Vesak festival on 21 May, the Army resumed Operation Jayasikurui three days later. Amidst heavy LTTE attacks destroying tanks and armoured vehicles, troops secured Rambaikulam, a mile north of Omanthai, on 24 May.
The Tigers put up stiff resistance as troops from Veli Oya moved closer to Mullaitivu where LTTE leader V Prabhakaran’s One-Four Base lies deep in thick jungles. LTTE’s artillery guns, captured in the Mullaitivu Army camp attack in July last year, and mortar fire caused large number of casualties in the Army on both fronts. Colombo newspapers say 130 soldiers died and 650 injured. Other sources put the casualty figures at 1,000. According to the government 214 Tigers were killed and over 600 wounded. The LTTE admits to only 72 killed.
Villages between Omanthai and Nedunkerni are deserted. People have fled north-east to Mullaitivu and Puthukudyiruppu or north-west to Thunukkai and Mantai. Others have gone to the western coastal town of Nachchikudah to take a boat to Jaffna or to the southern Indian state of Tamil Nadu. Nineteen refugees trying to escape the fighting drowned when their boat capsized off Jaffna on 28 May. Over 160 refugees have died in the Palk Strait since October.
Over 3,000 refugees trekked across the jungle to Uyilankulam in Mannar District through the Madhu area. Reports say that only those displaced in December 1995 from Jaffna are being allowed into Uyilankulam by the Army and permanent Vanni residents are being turned back. Around 1,200 people have been sent to the UNHCR camp in Pesalai and Mannar Government Agent (GA) SM Croos says Jaffna refugees will be transported by ship to the peninsula.
As fighting began and transport across Thandikulam to the Vanni was suspended, NGOs expressed fears of new food and medical shortages in the region. Medicines for the second quarter of 1997 have still not reached the Vanni. As international NGOs met in Colombo to discuss the emerging humanitarian crisis in mid-May, Kilinochchi GA S Thillainadarajah dispatched urgent messages to Colombo bureaucrats asking for 450 lorry-loads of rice and wheat flour.
Mullaitivu GA R Tharmakulasingham who also demanded urgent supply of food says many people in the district are suffering from diseases without adequate medicines. The Army at Madhu refused to permit Mr Thillainadarajah to travel to Colombo to explain the plight of the civilians to the government. On 31 May, 80 food lorries were permitted on a circuitous route through Madhu to Periyamadhu with ICRC escort.
After the loss of Jaffna, the Tigers place great importance on the Vanni, where their command and control centres, fuel and arms stores and underground hospitals lie. Vital LTTE supply routes linking the north and the east run through the Vanni. Speaking to the BBC on 13 May former Airforce chief Harry Goonetilleke said that Operation Certain Victory was inevitable as government supplies to Jaffna by air and sea were proving highly expensive.
By the end of May Sri Lankan troops had not reached Puliyankulam. Some observers say the government’s intention is to go for a general election riding a wave of popularity after Operation Certain Victory to enhance its current wafer-thin majority in Parliament and to push through the devolution package. Analysts have little doubt that the battle for the Vanni will be bloody.