Colombo: Sri Lanka's four-year ceasefire is now void and the country’s two-decade civil war is back on, a top Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) operative said on Monday as the guerrillas and the military entered a sixth straight day of fighting.
S Elilan, head of the Tigers' political wing in the restive eastern district of Trincomalee, said Army troops had resumed a bid to advance towards land they control in the east and had fired artillery shells at their territory in the north.
"The ceasefire agreement has become null and void at the moment," Elilan said by telephone from Trincomalee, adding government troops were continuing an advance towards their forward defence line in the east in a water supply dispute.
"The war is on and we are ready," added Elilan. "The war has begun. It is the government which has started the war. Militarily we have decided to fight back if the Sri Lankan Army enters our area."
Elilan is not the Tigers' main spokesman but he is one of the their top officials and their political head in Trincomalee.
Sri Lanka's Air Force has killed 15 rebels in five days of aerial bombing raids in the east and injured several others.
The army says it has sustained no casualties — despite becoming bogged down in a minefield on Sunday as they tried to reach a sluice they accuse the Tigers of blocking to choke water supplies to Sinhalese farmers in government territory.
The head of the island's Nordic truce monitoring mission said on Saturday the 2002 truce was dead in all but name after fresh fighting has killed more than 800 people so far this year, but said he expected low intensity fighting rather than a full-blown conflict.
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