Sri Lankan helicopter crash kills four as Tigers mark Heroes Week
Rajkumar Subramaniam
Sri Lankan helicopter crash kills four as Tigers mark Heroes Week by Amal
Jayasinghe
Tue 25 Nov 97 - 05:18 GMT
COLOMBO, Nov 25 (AFP) - A helicopter crashed during a mission to
evacuate battle casualties in northern Sri
Lanka Tuesday and all four people on board were killed, officials said.
The defence ministry said the air force Bell-212 helicopter fitted
with two machine guns was flying over the region of
Vavuniya when it crashed soon after the pilots decended to 500
feet, a manoeuvre to avoid rebel missile attacks.
The cause of the crash was not immediately known. Security forces
later found the charred wreckage of the
helicopter with the bodies of the two pilots and two gunners, the
ministry said.
The separatist Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) guerrillas
are known to have used anti-aircraft heat-seeking
missiles in recent months and Tuesday's loss came during the
guerrillas' "Heroes Week" celebrations.
Security forces are on high alert for possible rebel attacks during
the week to commemorate rebel dead, which ends
on Wednesday.
Two weeks ago, a Russian-built Mi-24 helicopter gunship was shot
down by Tiger guerrillas in the northeast. Two
pilots were killed while two gunners escaped with minor injuries.
Thousands of soldiers meanwhile pressed on with an offensive to
open a key land route through rebel-held territory to
the northern peninsula of Jaffna.
There was no immediate word from the LTTE about the helicopter
crash. But the rebels in a statement from their
London office said eight of their fighters had been killed in the
north since Friday.
The air force has had a dismal record since the outbreak of fresh
fighting in April 1995. It has lost 25 aircraft,
including helicopters, transport planes, spy aircraft and ground
attack aircraft.
In August the air force admitted that the Tigers had fired a
heat-seeking Stinger at one of its Kfir jets, which managed
to deflect the missile.
It was the first time the air force had announced that Tigers had
acquired the missiles despite pilots' private complaints
that at least two planes were shot down with missiles in April 1995.
A press report in London said in September the Kurdish Workers'
Party had sold 11 Stinger missiles to the Tamil
Tiger guerrillas which were used to shoot down military transport
planes.
The LTTE is fighting for an independent homeland in the northeast.
More than 50,000 people have been killed in the
separatist war in the past 25 years.
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