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Lankan troops take key Tiger sea base

Tamil group to free child soldiers

AFP, Colombo
Sn Lankan troops yesterday captured a key Tamil Tiger naval base as part of an offensive to dismantle the rebels' northern fiefdom, the defence ministry said.
Security forces leading a major offensive to capture the Tamil Tiger political capital of Kilinochchi had opened another front in the neighbouring Mullaittivu district where the Tigers maintain their mam military facilities.
Troops entered the sea Tiger bastion of Alampil, located about 10 kilometres (six miles) south of Mullaittivu (town) this morning.' the ministry said in a statement
It gave no details of casualties. but said the guerrillas had used Alampil as a key sea port to land supplies.
’Mullaittivu has become untenable as the fall of Alampil would facilitate the assault on Mullaittivu,"the ministry said.
There was no immediate word from the Tigers who are known to operate a fleet of vessels to smuggle in weapons, last year, Sri Lanka's navy claimed it had destroyed at least 10 ships of the Liberation TigersofTamil Eelam (LTTE).
Meanwhile fighting raged in the north of the island as its troops maintained their advance on Kilinochchi.
The ministry had said last week that the fall of Kilinochchi. 330 kilometres (200 miles) north of Colombo, was imminent, but government troops have since been slowed down by monsoon rainsand flooding.
More rains were expected on Thursday and Fridav, according to Sri Lanka's meteorological office.
The LTTE has admitted losing ground to government troops but their leader. Velupillai Prabhakaran. has vowed to fight on.
The guerrillas, who began their struggle for a separate Tamil homeland in 1972, are facing the Sri Lankan army's biggest ever offensive.
Meanwhile, a government-backed Tamil militant group in Sri Lanka has pledged to releaseJ62 child’soldiers from its ranks, the United Nations Children's Fund (Unicef) said’ on Thursday.
The TMVP party led by former Tamil Tiger Vinayagamoorthy Murali tharan, better known as Colonel Karuna, signed an agreement with Unicef and the Colombo government to release the underaged soldiers by the end of the year.
"This agreement shows a clear political commitment and is a very- important step in putting an end to the recruitment and use of children by the TMVP.’ the Unicef representative in Sri Lanka, Philippe Duamelle, said.
However rights groups accused the TMVP of not honouring similar pledges in the past.
Unicef figures showed that there were 133 outstanding cases of child recruitment by the group at the end of
October.
Of those. 62 were still under 18 years of age while the remaining 71 were now above 18. but had been recruited when they were children.
Human rights groups and UN officials have often accused the TMVP of recruiting boys and girls with the alleged support of government troops and police. The Sri Lankan government denies involvement.
The TMVP was created after Colonel Karuna broke away from the main Tamil Tiger separatist movement in 2001 and began cooperating with government forces in a military campaign against the main l iger guerrilla group
The UN agency said there were another 1,500 outstanding cases of child soldier recruitment by Tiger guerrillas.
The agency estimates that its figures reflect only a third of the actual number of children enlisted.
In September, the government ordered UN agency staff out of rebel-held northern regions, citing safety reasons, as the military moved to dismantle Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) strong-holdsin the north.
"As a result. Unicef has since been unable to receive and verify cases of child recruitment since that time." the agency said.
lens of thousands of people have died since the LTTE launched a separatist campaign in 1972 to carve out an independent state for minority Tamils in the north and east of the Sinhalese-majority island.