Tigers attack Weli Oya FDL -radio

The Voice of Tigers said in its night news broadcast that the Liberation Tigers attacked and destroyed the Forward Defence Lines of the Sri Lanka army between Mankindi Malai and Akkarai Weli in the Weli Oya region in the early hours of Friday morning around 2.30 a.m. The radio said ten bunkers on the FDL were overrun by Tiger troops and that four SLA soldiers were killed.

A Rocket Propelled Grenade Launcher, ammunition and other military items were recovered from the overrun positions, the VOT said.

Mankindi Malai was renamed Janakapura by Maj.Gen. (ret) Janaka Perera, currently Sri Lanka’s high commissioner to Australia, after Tamils living here were forcibly evacuated by SLA troops in 1984.

The Sri Lankan government settled Sinhala civilians in the abandoned Tamil villages of this region (by now officially referred to in Sinhala as Weli Oya, a translation of Manal Aaru-sand river) and set up a string of SLA camps in and around it.

Maj. Gen. (ret) Perera (then a brigadier) was posted for two years in Janakapura as the commander of the SLA’s Special Forces which were then under the army's Independent Birgade.

Mankindi Malai or Janakapura was one of the key army camps here. It was rebuilt after the Liberation Tigers overran and burnt it down in 1993.

(http://www.tamilnet.com/art.html?catid=13&artid=6188)