LTTE claims 29 soldiers in Puliyankulam battle

Tamil militants beat back troops in northern Sri Lanka on Tuesday and fired a Stinger missile at an air force jet. Twenty-nine soldiers were killed, over 60 were wounded and three tanks were crippled, the military said on Wednesday.

A military communique said Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam rebels fired the missile at one of the two Israeli-built KFIR jets on reconnaissance over Puliyankulam as a fierce battle raged on the ground. The rebels fired the missile at the leading aircraft. The pilot of the second aircraft saw it coming and gave warning.

The other pilot immediately released the anti-missile flares that drew the heat-seeking missiles and made them explode at a safe distance from his aircraft. The air force had inducted anti-missile systems anticipating missile attacks by the LTTE, the communique stated.

It was the first time that the air force officially admitted the LTTE had surface-to-air missiles, though senior officials privately said the rebels had used them to bring down at least three aircraft in 1995-96 after the peace talks with the government collapsed. Then the LTTE had reportedly used the Russian or Ukranian-made Strella missiles and not American Stingers, which are being used for the first time now.

Military sources said the rebels had allegedly fired a missile at an MI-24 helicopter gunship during the siege of the Mullaitivu military base in July 1996, but it did not make contact. They said no intelligence reports were available about how many Stingers the LTTE possessed, but agreed that the missiles had introduced a new dimension to the island's ethnic war.

The sources said the Stingers were most probably procured from Afghanistan, where they were freely available after the Americans supplied them to the Mujahideen through Pakistan to fight Soviet troops.

The Stinger attack on the jets came days after the LTTE appealed to the US not to authorise the sale of these aircraft to Sri Lanka, alleging they were used to bomb Tamil civilians.

The military communique also raised the LTTE casualties to 130 killed and over 200 wounded, though the LTTE's London office claimed it lost only seven cadres.

LTTE forces ''crushed'' the troops's advance from Palayawadi to Puliyankulam, a key township on the strateigc Vavuniya-Jaffna highway, inflicting heavy losses, an LTTE statement said.

It said two battle tanks were destroyed, two more heavily damaged and one troops carrier with a mounted 73 mm gun captured intact. It also said that the bodies of eight soldiers were recovered after the troops withdrew with heavy losses.

The military communique said three battle tanks were damaged east of Puliyankulam due to rocket-propelled grenade attack by militants.

It said two buses bringing rebel reinforcements were destroyed by troops in an ambush south west of Puliyankulam. ''KFIR aircraft and EI 24 helicopters of the Sri Lanka air force engaged the fleeing terrorists, inflicting heavy casualties among them,'' it said, adding that a number of rebel mortar positions were neutralised by the artillery.