|
Seelan’s
death, Thirunelveli ambush and Black July
Seelan’s
death was the cause of the Thirunelveli ambush which created
the occasion for the July riots. I mentioned this sequence
on March 26, when I commented on the death of Sarath Munasinghe,
a former army spokesman.
Munasinghe was the chief of the army intelligence unit in
Jaffna in 1983. On receiving information that Seelan (Charles
Anthony), Prabhakaran’s deputy was operating in Meesalai
he led a raid in Meesalai - Kachchai area but failed to locate
his hiding place. While returning, Munasinghe who was driving
the van saw two men in military type uniforms riding on bicycles.
The man on the pillion of one bicycle had a gun.
When Munasinghe slowed the van the men dropped their bicycles
on the road, jumped over the fence and ran through a field.
The commando fire felled Ananthan. The other two, Seelan and
Aruna, ran. Seelan fell because he could not run anymore.
He ordered Aruna to shoot him and escape. Aruna did it. Though
hit by commando fire he escaped and conveyed the shocking
news to Prabhakaran.
Prabhakaran decided to take revenge on the army that caused
his trusted deputy’s death. The decision was to ambush
the army’s night patrol. He ordered Kittu and Sellakili
to monitor the movements of the night patrol and to select
the location for the ambush.
They found that the army patrol codenamed ‘Four Four
Bravo’ left the Mathagal Army Camp at 8 p.m. and went
through Jaffna town to the Gurunagar camp The soldiers had
their dinner there and returned through Kondavil, Kokuvil,
Thirunelveli and Mathagal. It passed through Thirunelveli
around 11:00 p.m. They selected Thirunelveli for the ambush
as the road was normally deserted at that time and on Saturdays
the road was empty.
They found that the Telecommunication Department was digging
the road to lay telephone cables. They also found a flat-
roofed shop close to the road and the houses on both sides
had parapet walls.
Around 10:00 p.m. on July 23, a Saturday, Sellakili parked
a Delica white van on the cross road near the Thirunelveli
junction. Prabhakaran got down first and the others followed.
Victor, the well-built among them, carried a heavy sack. They
walked to the selected spot and Sellakili and Appaiah buried
the landmines and Sellakili climbed on to the roof with the
exploder.
Prabhakaran, 29, divided the rest into two groups. He headed
one and Kittu the other. Ranjan, Baseer Kaka, Pulenthiran,
and Santhosam were in his group. Victor, Appaiah, Ponnaman
and Ganesh, were with Kittu.
Prabhakaran had his G3, and others had SMGs and rifles. They
had a few hand grenades. That was the armoury the 33 member
LTTE then had.
The army patrol commanded by Vass Gunawardene reached Gurunagar
Camp as usual and Munasinghe invited Gunawardene for a drink.
“Thanks. I want to have a quick meal and depart,”
Gunawardene replied. He said goodnight to Munasinghe after
the meal and offered him a Bristol cigarette and lit it with
his blue gas lighter. He also smoked one.
Gunawardene jumped into the front seat of the jeep driven
by the army driver Private Manatunga and two soldiers got
into the back seat. A company of ten soldiers boarded the
truck which was driven by army driver Corporal Perera. The
patrol leisurely went to Naga Vihare where it stopped for
a few minutes and proceeded to Urumpirai through Nallur and
Kopay. From Urmpirai, Gunawardene contacted the radio room
at Gurunagar and reported that everything was normal.
The patrol then proceeded along the normal return route. Sellakili
who was standing on the roof could hear the sound of the approaching
vehicles. Then he spotted the headlights. Sellakili held the
exploder firmly.
Then the walkie-talkie told Sellakili: The patrol is passing
the junction, the jeep in front and the truck behind.
The plan was for Sellakili to allow the jeep to pass and blast
the truck. Kittu, in his account to the Tamil magazine Kalam
(Battlefield) says Sellakili had exploded the landmines when
the jeep was over it. One exploded under the jeep and the
other behind it.
The thundering explosion was heard three to four kilometers.
Army officers in the Gurunagar Camp heard it loud and clear.
The jeep was thrown up and fell in the middle of the road
on its side. Kittu had told another Tamil magazine Devi that
the jeep was thrown up to the height of a tall coconut tree.
The blast threw up a cloud of dust and dug a huge crater.
Kittu said the headlights of the jeep were still burning and
he could not see anything. “I shot at the headlights
with the SMG I carried and then cut the jeep horizontally.
The driver (Manatunga) must have died then.” Manatunga
was found dead on the driver’s seat with his head on
the steering. The body of Gunawardene was thrown a few meters
away from the road. The bodies of the other two soldiers,
seated in back seats, were found behind the jeep.
The driver of the truck applied the brake and it stopped just
in front of the wall behind which Prabhakaran was waiting.
He (Prabhakaran) said later that when he looked over the wall
he saw the soldiers getting ready to fire. He felled them
with his G3.
Kittu told Kalam that two soldiers jumped out and hid themselves
behind the tyres and opened fire. Ranjan threw a grenade killing
one of them. The other escaped and ran through a lane.
Brigadier Lyle Balthazaar, Jaffna Army Commander, and
Munasinghe heard the explosion. They drove to the
scene of the attack. When they reached there the Tigers had
left.
When the Tigers walked back to the van, they realised that
Sellakili was missing, Victor ran back and found Sellakili
lying in a pool of blood dead. They took his body and went
back to their camp.
They did not know then that they had killed 13 soldiers, which
had altered the course of Sri Lanka’s history. (Next
week: What happened next, Sunday, July 24).
|
