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Casualties revealed as Colombo counts cost of victory

Sydney Morning Herald - May 23, 2009

Matt Wade Herald, Colombo – More than 23,000 Sri Lankan soldiers died during the country's long civil war, including 6200 in the final campaign to defeat the Tamil Tigers.

The Defence Secretary, Gotabhaya Rajapaksa, told state television yesterday that 6261 army, navy, air force, police and civil defence force personnel had been killed, and nearly 30,000 wounded, since the military launched the final offensive against the Tigers in August 2006. "We made huge sacrifices for this victory," he said.

Mr Rajapaksa, who is the President Mahinda Rajapaksa's brother, said 23,790 military personnel had been killed since the civil war started in the early 1980s.

He did not give casualty figures for the Tamil Tigers, but the rebels said last November that they had lost more than 22,000 cadres since the first guerilla death in November 1982.

The United Nations estimates the death toll from the civil war to be 80,000 to 100,000. An unofficial UN estimate puts the civilian toll this year alone at 7000. About 280,000 ethnic Tamils have fled the fighting and are in camps. This includes the world's most populated refugee camp at Manik Farm, which now houses almost 200,000 people.

The Government has revealed there are thousands of former Tamil Tiger combatants mingling with regular civilians in the closely guarded camps.

The Foreign Secretary, Palitha Kohona, told the Herald that about 4000 former rebels had "sneaked in" to the general refugee population. This group was under close surveillance.

"We will need to see how they will integrate and leave their past behind, or whether they will still harbour thoughts of going back into the jungle," Dr Kohona said. "We are just watching them."

Many may have been forced to support the Tigers and had not been serious combatants.

"We would like to give them a chance to quietly reintegrate into society and not rake up their past and make a mess of their lives," he added.

Another 2000 Tiger cadres who surrendered or were captured were being "rehabilitated" in special facilities, Dr Kohona said.

Among those being held in camps are 20 Catholic priests who stayed with those trapped in the conflict zone until the resistance was finally wiped out this week.

"They were inside bunkers with the civilians until the army came and rescued them after the killing of [Tamil Tiger] leaders," Father Damian Fernando, the spokesman for the Catholic relief agency Caritas, said.

One priest who was inside the conflict zone was still unaccounted for, he said.

The Government has promised the Indian Government that most of the 280,000 Tamils living in the camps will be relocated by the end of this year.

The United Nations spokesman in Sri Lanka, Gordon Weiss, dubbed the goal "pleasantly optimistic."

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