Wednesday’s explosion: ‘We were there just minutes before’

The explosion of two anti-personnel mines that were rigged together inside the Talgasmankada army camp on Wednesday evening, which blasted the right leg of an army commando and caused shrapnel injuries to two Wild Life Department trackers sent a chill down our spines, for only a few minutes earlier myself, photographer Lakshman Gunatillake and our driver Ranjith were in the same camp getting a guided tour of the havoc caused by the attacking Tigers two evenings earlier.

In fact Ranjith had been busy chatting with those trackers while we were there and all three of us had walked a few feet past the place near the camp toilets where the LTTE had planted the two mines. We were later informed by Capt. W.G.H.K.Weerasinghe who was in charge of restoring the camp, having led the first rescue team to reach the overrun camp, that another mine had been detected soon after the twin explosion in the same vicinity. Army sappers were entrusted the task of unearthing mines in that region from that morning as these mines were not on beaten paths.

We would have possibly been twice lucky that evening. We left the camp around 4:30 p.m. with the intention of visiting the Varahana army detachment from where another party of reinforcements had rushed to Talgasmankada on Monday night along the Menik Ganga having crossed the river using the sole bridge in the park situated there and using the padayatra route used by Tamil pilgrims to trek to Kataragama annually. This padayatra route also goes past the rear of the Talgasmankada camp on the other side of the river. On the way to Varahana we stopped to inspect the site of the blasted army tractor that was taking away the six bodies of soldiers killed in the attack, its sole injured survivor and four other soldiers who had come to retrieve the bodies.

Having photographed the site we were quickly advancing several hundred metres towards Varahana, when the bungalow keeper Sunil Gunawardena who accompanied us to show the way suddenly realized that there were no scratch marks on the road ahead, of army sappers having cleared it of mines. So we immediately turned back to leave the park by entering its main route.

No sooner we hit the main road artery, suddenly up ahead was a minor road blockade with an ambulance and a couple of army vehicles. On seeing this spectacle we too got down from our vehicle and rushed towards the ambulance as it was virtually surrounded. Here we found Army Dr Major Mangala Kannangara had just amputated the right leg below the knee of Thusitha Kumara of the Second Commando regiment injured in the anti-personnel mine blast at Talgasmankada. Also given first aid treatment inside the ambulance were the two trackers with shrapnel wounds.

Ironically Thusitha Kumara was part of a contingent of commandos who had trekked a vast distance from Gothamipura in Kataragama to Talgasmankada over a two day period in search of the attackers. They arrived at the Talgasmankada camp while we were there to take a warm meal and a well deserved rest after an operation that covered more than 30 miles along the right bank of the Menik Ganga.