Sri Lanka: Activity of The Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (ltte)

By July 22nd members of LTTE Tigers reached Gampaha district by different routes. They were unarmed and travelling as group of two or singles in order to avoid unnecessary attention. Tigers have arranged luxury tourist bus with a destination board of down south area where mostly Sinhalese lives. As per Tigers officials, they managed to pass the road security barriers by bribing the guards. They pretended as tourists who came to drop their relatives who supposed to catch the flight next day.

Tigers parked their vehicle in Raja Fernando playground continue to pretending as tourists who were on picnic. Tamil tigers that were fluent in Sinhala had casual chat with neighborhood people and used Sinhalese classical music playing in cassette to continue their cover. This was around 2030.

The usual power cut occurs in the area around 2145 till 2315 where tigers made their move to vicinity of airport. They already had the blue prints of the airport which they bought from middle management air force officers for huge amount of cash.

Tigers were holding sacks of heavy with machine guns, magnetic devices with timers to affix explosives onto targets, mortars, assault rifles, Rocket Propelled grenade RPG launchers, anti-tank weapons, plastic explosives, grenade launchers, shells, grenades, spare ammunition and night vision equipment carried by the Tigers to the airport by the airport railway path.

Tigers were heading to the drainage canal that was partly connected with the airport ground and the main road. This was to prevent flooding of the runways during rainy season. The drainage was dry and Tigers crawled through this drainage canal towards the base which led to electric fence. One of Tigers reached the power supply electric transformers and blowed-up three transformers. Still airport security didn’t suspect anything and informed electricity board at 0315 regarding the power cut.

The Air base was in total darkness. Some Tigers moved towards the hangars and prepared to explode the aircraft which were parked at the hanger.

Once airport security and air force figured out the unauthorized entry, long battle went on from 3:50 to 8:30 am. After specialized commando unit of the rapid deployment force arrived on the scene and Tigers had hard time of fighting back. The commandos managed to kill and capture all Tigers.

By the time Tigers were managed to destroy are three airbuses, three K-8 trainer planes, two K- fir bombers, one MIG-27 jetfighter and two MI-17 helicopter gunships. Three airbuses are damaged.

With immediate effect authorities got alerted and 22 flights were scheduled to land and take off from midnight to noon on Tuesday 24th.Five aircrafts were over the Sri Lankan air space when the attack began. Passengers were off loaded, outgoing flights cancelled and all incoming ones diverted to India.