CLASSIFIED | POLITICS | TERRORISM | OPINION | VIEWS

The Success of SLAF Air Raid on the 23rd January, judging by the reactions of the LTTE

Sisira Pereira, Panadura

In the brief aftermath of the bombing of the LTTE’s X-Ray base by the SLAF suggests more than just wild guessing about the extent of damage that may have been inflicted on the terrorists. First of all, when the Government defence news sites straightforwardly reported the pin-pointed air attack on the terrorist base at 11.15 am on the 23rd, it took the Tamilnet, the official mouth piece of the LTTE terrorists, more than 7 hours to publish some inference about the incident on their website. While the speculation was rife in Colombo that the SLAF might have got the terror chief himself, updating of news for the 23rd on Tamilnet did not start by refuting the SLAF claim straight away, but published a few mundane news items around 5.05 pm that had no relevance whatsoever to the bombing mission, which was gaining hot speculation all over the country, and that too was seen after a good 6 hours of the bombing. And when they were able to finally produce a denial regarding the incident, it too was very much vague a refutation, by Rasaiah Illanthiriyan of the LTTE, alleging that the SLAF had targeted civilian settlements, a popular fall back ploy of the LTTE to hide their military losses to pinpoint air raids by the SLAF.

However, this time around, taking action after many hours of the incident, the Tamilnet did not carry any photographs of damaged houses or injured civilians, as they would usually do after the SLAF targets their military assets by air. Nor they denied the fact that the targeted area was a high security zone as claimed by the Army. The refutation just pooh-poohed SLAF claims of having possibly done some harm to the LTTE leader and said similar propaganda had been launched even after the Tsunami had hit the island.

Compared to the quick and the solid claim of the SLAF of having precisely targeted one of the LTTE’s most clandestine places hidden in the jungles, the Tamilnet’s belated refutation seems to reflect the dilemma it had to go through since the time of bombing at 11.15 am until some refutation was finally assembled to put on the Tamilnet, that too being a few lines of usual SLAF-hitting-civilian-settlements crap. As of the following morning (6 am, 24th Thursday,) the Tamilnet news item remained without any addition or deletion to the news item.

Furthermore, a few news agencies claimed that the LTTE radio communications immediately stopped seconds after the bombing, drawing similarity with the bombing mission that saw the end of Thamil Chelvan, and the Island newspaper reported that an intercepted communication by the LTTE claimed that “a severe catastrophe has occurred to us, so utter nothing”. And unconfirmed reports claimed that all the shops in Kilinochchi were ordered closed by the LTTE in the aftermath of the bombing.

Now why would that be necessary if the SLAF had actually dropped their legal cargo on a civilian settlement? If something of that sort (civillian settlements being hit) happened, the LTTE would welcome it and go to town with that rather than admitting it to be a catastrophe to their fellow criminals. And the LTTE's order to close all the shops in Kilinochchi would have been to ensure safe transport of the injured, possibly high-ranking LTTE personnel, who were killed or injured and also to conceal the whole evacuation process from the eyes of the general public and the enemy intelligenceoperatives lurking in their neighbourhood.

The heavy payload of legal cargo that saw the end of the targeted X-Ray base of the LTTE would have reduced the spot in to a ground zero that removing debris and taking stock of the full extent of damage of the attack might have initially taken the LTTE some 7-8 hours, similar to the Tamil Chelvan incident, which may explain the delay that we saw in the time of publishing of the Tamilnet refutation by Illanthiriyan.

Judging by all these developments, it is very much possible, even for a layman, to fathom that the SLAF air raid on the 23rd of January has surely been able to destroy an important hiding place of the terrorists, possibly with a high number of terrorist casualties too. Now it may be another point for speculation whether the LTTE leader, himself, was actually hit, killed, injured, escaped or was somewhere else altogether at the time of bombing. However, what is undeniable is that the target was in no way a civilian settlement as claimed by the LTTE on the Tamilnet. Perhaps their refutation could have carried more weight if they did not resort to such silly allegations, which even the dumbest would know to be stone false.

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