The Armed Forces have been compelled to fight against the terrorists on many fronts and as a responsible government we have a duty to protect the people from the bloodthirsty terrorists, Prime Minister Ratnasiri Wickremanayake said in parliament yesterday moving to extend the State of Emergency for one more month.

The Premier said it was very important that all patriotic forces should join hands in the war against terrorism. "Therefore we have to say that our armed forces are achieving victories on many fronts and the liberation of the North from the grip of the terrorists is not very far".

He said it was necessary to fight the terrorists in local and international fronts and silence some elements that were cooperating with the terrorists.

The Premier said the LTTE as a reprisal for the Army liberating the Madhu Shrine held very sacred by the Catholics had killed 26 innocent civilians in a bomb blast on a bus at Piliyandala and among the dead were a Buddhist monk and an infant. But they cannot stop the advance of the Armed Forces in the North.

What the terrorists intended to do was to hide their defeat by targeting innocent civilians but the intelligence services and the police with the cooperation from the public have been able to avert many more attacks by the terrorists at several places, like the discovery of explosives and bombs at Galgamuwa, Wolfendhal Street and Bandaragama.

During the period from March 31st April 29, 120 members of the army and the police were killed and 945 injured in fighting against the terrorists. During the same period 56 civilians were killed and 145 civilians were injured in attacks by terrorists.

Opening the emergency debate for the Opposition UNP Kandy District member Tissa Attanayake said the armed forces suffered a setback at Muhamalai last month. When there were political agendas this type of setbacks were suffered by the forces.

How could you call the Eastern Provincial Council election an independent and free one when one political group was carrying arms? Though there were 280 checkpoints in the East there was no one checking the Pillaiyan Group.

The Pillaiyan group had camps located near army camps and police stations. There were 12 such camps in the East. The government should stop the armed political activities carried out by armed groups.

JVP Kurunegala District member Anura Dissanayaka said there were two people who were afraid of the democratic political process. One was the terrorist leader Prabhakaran and the other was President Mahinda Rajapaksa.

The JVP had always supported the extension of the emergency regulations so that the armed forces were given the support to carry out their difficult task. But today the emergency was being used for not only defeating terrorists but for other political agendas including the suppression of the media and political activity.

He said the Civil Defence Committees that functioned well at Gomarankadawala and Vendrasakulam and many other places have now become inactive due to politicization. If the terrorist attacks on civilians were to be prevented these committees should work independently without politics coming into them.

Ven Ellawala Medhananda Nayake Thera (JHU) said the LTTE terrorists had used the precincts of the Madhu Church to build bunkers and make it a supply centre for their fighting cadres. It was also expecting the armed forces to attack the church area so that if the church was damaged they could have easily blamed the armed forces for it. But the armed forces did not fall for the ploy. Instead of attacking the shrine area they cut off all the supply routes of the LTTE terrorists so that they had to flee from the church grounds.