By NNN-Xinhua,
Colombo : Sri Lankan Prime Minister Ratnasiri Wickramanayake said on Tuesday that the military is advancing in the north and 120 forces personnel were killed in April.
Wickramanayake said in parliament that the Army was very much on the move in the north in their task to annihilate Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) rebels.
He said some 120 personnel from the Army, Navy and the Air force and Police were killed in clashes between March 31 and April29 while 945 of them injured in the clashes.
Some 56 civilians were also killed while 145 others injured, the prime minister said.
Since late last month the Army and the LTTE have been engaged in pitched battles from time to time especially in the northern Jaffna peninsula’s Muhamalai area.
The government has denied media claims of high military losses and said that the overall military objective of crushing the rebels would not be hampered by temporary setbacks in the battle field.
The government’s military thrust has succeeded in evicting the Tigers from the Eastern Province.
More than 70,000 have died in the island’s armed conflict since the mid-1980s. The Tamil rebels seek political independence for the minority Tamil community in the Northern and Eastern provinces.