Defeating LTTE was a challenging task: Lankan army

The victory of reducing the well-motivated and indoctrinated military organisation LTTE with a strength of more than 35,000 to an ideology was indeed a challenging task, he told visiting journalists.

The victory was so hard earned that 6,000 soldiers had to sacrifice their lives while 27,000 were rendered disabled during the operation against the LTTE. He said the military victory over the LTTE was a result of a bold political decision to combat them without any hesitation until the end.

He said one of the biggest challenges in the post war scenario was the influx of more than 200,000 displaced Tamil civilians during the humanitarian operations in north.

We never thought that we would have to receive more than 100,000 IDPs within a short period of three days amid small arms and machine gun fire and mortar attacks, he said.

The LTTE was defeated by the Lankan army in May with the death of its chief Velupillai Prabhakaran,whose pursuit for Tamil Eelam claimed the lives of over 70,000 people in three decades.