A week after a stunning victory over the LTTE, Sri Lankan militaryon Tuesday said it wants to boost up its manpower by more than 100,000 troops.
A week after a stunning victory over the LTTE, Sri Lankan militaryon Tuesday said it wants to boost up its manpower by more than 100,000 troops to prevent resurgence of the Tamil Tigers or any other such group.
The troop build up, which will increase the number of Sri Lankan forces from 200,000 to 300,000, was announced by the army chief Gen Sarath Fonseka amidst fears in Colombo that the Tamil Tigers living abroad may try to resurrect the group under a new leadership.
"There may be people abroad trying to promote a new leader and stage a comeback," Fonseka told state-run Independent Television Network. But, "it will not be easy for them to build up a terror group as they did before", the army chief said.
Sri Lankan army after almost a two-year relentless offensive claimed to have "totally destroyed" the LTTE cadres, killing all its top and second rung leadership including its
supremo Velupillai Prabhakaran and intelligence chief Pottu Amman.
More than 22,000 LTTE fighters were killed in the offensive and another 9,000 surrendered to the government forces, Fonseka said.The Lankan army chief said his forces along with other agencies were now on the lookout for large number of suicide
bombers smuggled into Colombo and other Sinhala dominated cities before the crushing blow to the LTTE.
The Lankan agencies are on high alert as they fear that these LTTE suicide bombers might carry out revenge attacks on high profile targets. The army chief also indicated that fresh operations might be carried out to flush out small Tiger units still in hiding
in the jungles in the northeast and eastern part of the country.
In the interview, Fonseka made a call to the country's youth to enlist in the armed forces in order to keep the nation safe from rebuilt terrorist groups. The army chief also accused foreign government and humanitarian agencies of pressing for a ceasefire during the last phase of the the offensive to rescue the LTTE leadership rather than protect trapped Tamil civilians, as they claim."Their intention was to destabilise Sri Lanka," he said without naming any country.
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