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Eight
Navy men killed in LTTE attack on Dvora Eleven
others including the commanding officer, Lt. Cmdr. Chaminda Navaratne
were rescued by fishermen. This was after their badly damaged FAC
sank. They were brought to the village of Batalangunduwa, south
of Kalpitiya. An official Government statement avoided pointed reference to the LTTE over the incident. However, it said it was a "suicide style operation" where the crew exploded the trawler "causing significant damage." President Mahinda Rajapaksa, who was on a tour of the south winding up the campaign for SLFP for next week's local elections cut short his tour. An Air Force helicopter was rushed to bring him to Colombo last evening. The sunk drown Dvora (431), a brand new fast attack craft built by Colombo Dockyard together with another, was on patrol in the deep sea waters south of Mannar. They were led by the Navy's gunboat "SLNS Jayasagara." Their mission was to check on attempts by trawlers to smuggle in defence supplies for the LTTE after reports that a ship load was to head for Colombo last Thursday. This special search operation was the result of Wednesday's apprehension by the Navy of a multi-day fishing trawler with five persons on board. Their interrogation revealed that three of them were top LTTE intelligence operatives. Navy
Headquarters will today lodge a protest with the Sri Lanka Monitoring
Mission over yesterday's incident. President Rajapaksa is today
expected to confer with senior defence and military officials to
discuss yesterday’s incident and determine what further Government
action was needed. |
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