LTTEs waterloo

Maj. Weerasekara said that Theepan’s body which was found near a shrub indicated that he was injured a few days ago and the terrorists had been trying to take him out of the fighting.

“He was given blood and the two tubes were fixed to drain the blood caused due to internal bleeding. He was wearing an army shirt and a black trouser”, he said adding that the name Theepan was carved in the trouser belt and no tag hung around his neck.

The tracer lights continuously lit up the skies of the one square kilometre fierce battle front, indicating that the terrorists trapped in encircled land were trying to flee. The open ground and the jungle territory was half illuminated by moon light, and the shadows of terrorists was slightly visible. While the firing was going on continuously, the terrorists, who did not know that they were trapped from both ends, were trying to breakthrough from a short cut to the A-35 road leading to the No Fire Zone (NFZ), barely 2.5 kms from the point of fighting.

Though the troops were tired after days long non-stop fierce fighting in the encircled area, where the LTTE leader was hiding for months but fled just two days before the fighting erupted, the soldiers did not leave breathing space for the run away LTTE cadres. They attacked them from dawn to dusk. Last Saturday, after a continuous three-hour long battle, troops of 6 Gemunu Regiment of the Air Mobile Team under the directions of Lt. Col. Mohan Ratnayake, captured the entire encircled area - Anandapuram.

It was the end game for nearly a dozen of top rung LTTE leaders including females. Mislead, some recruited as child solders to the outfit, breathed their last helplessly after they were abandoned by their so-called leader, the `sun God’, who promised a separate land for them for decades.

“We found 19 bodies and a large amount of weapons,” said Major Nandana Weerasekara explaining the ground situation where they found a body with tubes and a cannula.

Theepan’s body
The body was LTTE’s military leader Theepan which was discovered after it was despatched to the camp.

Theepan, the ruthless terrorist was responsible for killing many soldiers in the Northern terrain. Initially, the terrorists, consisting of 600 cadres had planned to attack via A-35 to recapture Puthukkudiyiruppu (PDK). But the pre-monitoring foiled this as the troops of the Task Force 8, 58 and 53 Divisions had surrounded the terrorists from all directions, completely sealing off their supply routes in Puthumathalan.

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