Tamil Tigers warn of full-scale war

Colombo : Renewed conflict in Sri Lanka will escalate into full-scale war if the military follows through on a declared plan to evict the Tamil Tigers from the island's volatile east, a top rebel has warned.

Around 20,000 war-displaced Tamils have fled from camps in and around the eastern Tiger-held town of Vakarai since early November to escape deadly artillery battles that have killed dozens of civilians, some trekking for days through jungle and even swimming across rivers.

Nordic truce monitors are alarmed at the military's plan to flush the Tigers out of the area, saying it violates the terms of a now tattered 2002 ceasefire. "Such actions by the Sri Lankan military will be considered by the LTTE as full scale war," S.P. Thamilselvan, head of the Tigers' political wing, told Reuters.

"It will certainly be a declaration of war by the Sri Lankan government. Such war-mongering by the Sri Lankan government will take the island to a very destructive and disastrous war."

The military has hemmed the Tigers into a 22-km stretch of coastline around Vakarai, and has already driven the rebels out of territory near the strategic northeastern port of Trincomalee further north.

The area around Vakarai is the Tigers' only remaining direct sea access in the east, and losing it would leave them landlocked in large swathes of jungle inland and surrounded by government territory and army camps.