Sri Lanka The Battle for Jaffna

By Thomas A. Sancton

Slogging their way through heavy rains, 6,000 Indian troops surrounded Jaffna town in northern Sri Lanka last week and advanced in a four-pronged assault. Resisting them every step of the way were about 2,000 guerrillas from the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam, the rebel group that has led a four-year struggle to gain an independent homeland for the West Virginia-size island's Tamil minority. Tens of thousands of terrified civilians were caught in the middle of the fighting. Most of them abandoned their homes and huddled in temples and schools, as food supplies grew scarce. By week's end Indian officials put their casualties at 86 dead and 260 wounded. They claimed to have killed some 500 Tigers, but the guerrillascharged that most of the dead were civilians.

. The assault came just 2 1/2 months after India's Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi and Sri Lanka's President Junius R. Jayewardene signed a peace pact aimed at ending the civil strife. According to that agreement, a peacekeeping force from India, Sri Lanka's closest neighbor, was responsible for disarming the rebels. An "interim council" was to be formed in the Tamil-dominated northern and eastern provinces, which would be merged and granted a substantial degree of local rule after elections, scheduled to be held before the end of this year.

But Tiger Leader Velupillai Prabakaran, 32, caused problems from the beginning. Although the Sri Lankan army promptly returned to the barracks under the terms of the pact, the Tigers kept the bulk of their weapons and used them to deadly effect. Within six weeks of the pact's signing, Prabakaran's forces had murdered more than 150 members of rival Tamil groups. Last month, using his arms as a bargaining chip, Prabakaran won a major concession from the Sri Lankan government in Colombo: the Tigers were given control of a majority of seats on the interim council. But after promising "full" support of the agreement, Prabakaran suddenly insisted on naming the head of the governing unit.

Meanwhile, 13 Tiger guerrillas, including three of Prabakaran's most trusted lieutenants, committed suicide by swallowing cyanide following their capture by the Sri Lankan navy two weeks ago. According to a Sri Lankan official, the deaths made Prabakaran "lose control" of himself. In a series of terrorist attacks, mainly in the east, the Tigers killed 170 civilians belonging to the country's Sinhalese majority. In addition, 27 Sri Lankan soldiers and policemen died at the hands of the rebels.

That bloody spree prompted the Indians, whose peacekeeping force had grown to more than 20,000, to launch their all-out drive against the Tigers. With Jayewardene's blessing, the Indians began moving against Tiger hideouts in the east, killing three rebels and arresting 98. Next Gandhi's forces began the much more difficult job of rooting the Tigers out of the Jaffna Peninsula, their main stronghold. After securing control of most of the peninsula, the Indians advanced on Jaffna town behind artillery and air strikes.

Many civilians were caught in the cross fire. With journalists barred from the town, the exact number of noncombatant deaths was impossible to determine. Tiger spokesmen charged that the Indians had killed more than 250 civilians. ; Indian diplomats did not deny that civilian casualties had taken place, but blamed them mostly on the rebels' tactic of using the local Tamil population as human "shields." In the eastern province, meanwhile, Tiger commandos murdered a total of 21 Sinhalese civilians in two separate attacks and killed 20 Indian soldiers in a land-mine explosion.

As the Indians tightened their grip on Jaffna, Prabakaran appealed to Gandhi for a cease-fire to "negotiate matters." Gandhi, however, has apparently stopped listening. Instead, he sent some 1,000 Indian reinforcements to the island in preparation for a final assault. Prabakaran and his men showed every sign of resisting to the end. But as one Sri Lankan intelligence officer observed with much satisfaction, it will be "only a matter of time before the Indians smash him."

With reporting by Qadri Ismail/Colombo and Ross H. Munro/New Delhi