Senior LTTE leader seriously injured
By IANSWednesday, January 28, 2009
COLOMBO - A senior leader of Sri Lanka’s Tamil Tigers has been seriously injured in an attack by advancing government troops, a pro-rebel website said Thursday.
K.V. Balakumaran, described as a ’special member’ of the LTTE, suffered injuries in an attack by the army at Udaiyarkattu in Mullaitivu Monday and is in a hospital, puthinam.com reported.
The military has not commented on the report.
Balakumaran was formerly the leader of the Eelam Revolutionary Organisation of Students (EROS) and joined the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) in the early 1090s.
As the EROS leader, Balakumaran was based in Tamil Nadu in India for many years.
He met then Indian prime minister Rajiv Gandhi in July 1987, hours before the latter flew to Colombo to sign a pact that led to the deployment of thousands of Indian troops in Sri Lanka’s northeast.
A leftist, Balakumaran took to Tamil militancy in Jaffna in the early 1980s after he was arrested for allegedly aiding a Tamil militant group to rob a bank where he was the manager.
The soft-spoken Balakumaran is the most senior leader of the LTTE to be wounded after the killing in November 2007 of the then LTTE political wing leader S.P. Thamilselvan.
