Colombo: President Mahinda Rajapaksa says Sri Lankan forces have captured the strategic base of Elephant Pass from the Tamil Tiger rebels.
Rajapaksa said in a nationally televised address that the rebels' last base on the Jaffna peninsula fell Friday on afternoon to advancing troops.
The capture of the base gives the government nearly full control of the peninsula for the first time since 2000. It also boxes the rebels into a shrinking pocket of territory in the northeast around their last remaining stronghold.
The former army base is as strategic as it is symbolic for the military. Its capture will put all of Jaffna in government hands for the first time since 2000, when the army lost Elephant Pass in one of its worst defeats in the 25-year war.
It will also open up the main north-south A-9 road linking Jaffna to the mainland, freeing up a mechanised division to join the battle now moving east toward the LTTE's last stronghold in the eastern port of Mullaittivu and its environs.
The LTTE have been fighting one of Asia's longest insurgencies to create a separate state for Sri Lanka's minority Tamils, many of whom complain of mistreatment since the Sinhalese ethnic majority took over at independence from Britain in 1948.
But many Sinhalese say Tamils enjoyed unfair advantages in terms of education and government jobs in colonial times. The Tigers are on US, European Union and Indian terrorism lists after carrying out hundreds of assassinations and suicide bombings, including against Tamils who challenged them.
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