LTTE AIRCRAFT ATTACK S. LANKA CAPITAL

Sri Lankan airforce personnel guard the wreckage at Katunayake, near the international airport of a rebel Tamil Tiger light aircraft.

COLOMBO: Defying the government's efforts to destroy them, Sri Lanka's rebels sent two planes on a surprise raid over the capital Friday night before anti-aircraft fire shot both of them out of the sky, the military said.

One plane crashed into a government office building in the heart of Colombo, killing the pilot and a bystander and wounding more than 40 others. The other came down in a suburb, killing that pilot as well, the military said.
The brazen raid by the Tamil Tigers' tiny air wing came amid an all-out army offensive that forced the rebels out of nearly all their strongholds in the north and left them on the brink of defeat in their quarter-century separatist war.
However, military spokesman Brig. Udaya Nanayakkara said the failure to bomb any strategic targets was a defeat for the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam.
The air raid started just after 9:30 p.m. The government immediately shut off all power in the capital, and searchlights crisscrossed the sky. Anti-aircraft fire rippled across the city as tracer rounds flew overhead and flares lit up the night.
Anti-aircraft fire hit one of the planes, which crashed into a tax office in the centre of the city near the air force headquarters, said the air force spokesman, Wing Commander Janaka Nanayakkara.
The crash killed two people, including the pilot, and wounded 43 others, health officials said. All the front windows of the high-rise building were shattered, and furniture inside was charred and splintered.
An Associated Press photographer at the scene observed authorities removing debris they described as parts of an aircraft. The second rebel plane was shot down near an air force base in the town of Katunayake, close to the international airport north of Colombo, Janaka Nanayakkara said.
The attack was the first air raid here since October, when the rebels bombed a power station on the outskirts of the city.
Source: THE TIMES OF INDIA, AP and REUTERS