The army yesterday captured Elephant Pass and brought the entire A-9 Highway under government control after a lapse of 23 years amidst heavy resistance from the LTTE, which later retreated to Mulliyan.

The 53 and 55 Divisions advanced from Soranpattu, which the army had bagged on Thursday and linked up with 58 Division. All three divisions will now concentrate on the LTTE-held areas such as Chempiyanpattu, Chundikulam and Kaddaikadu.

In 2000, the army lost its strategically important Elephant Pass camp, which had been established in the 1970s to serve as the main base for several camps in the Vanni. The LTTE had wrested control of Elephant Pass by launching its Unceasing Wave operation backed by small MBRLs which took the security forces by surprise. The LTTE had made an abortive attempt to capture the Elephant Pass military installation in 1991.

Military Spokesman Brig. Udaya Nanayakkara said that Armour, Artillery, Infantry and Mechanised divisions of the army and the Air Force which provided air cover to the advancing ground troops day and night had made the capture of Elephant Pass possible.

President Mahinda Rajapaksa addressing the nation last evening said the liberation of the A-9 highway would link the South with the North after many years and bring all communities together. He said when the army lost Elephant Pass in 2000, 359 soldiers and officers had perished in battle. About 349 troops had gone missing with 2,500 injured.

The President said four years back people had been compelled to pay illegal taxes to the LTTE to use the A-9 highway. The nation, he said, was grateful to the military personnel who had died in action and sustained injuries to make the country’s war against terrorism a success. He thanked the armed forces, the police and all those who had contributed to the battlefield gains.

At a time the military was about to finish terrorism, President Rajapaksa said, there was a conspiracy to unsettle the government and bring about political instability through attacks on democracy. He said certain elements were trying to discredit his government and the army commander.

He said: "When I took over as President, I determined myself to face any challenge for the sake of the country. We have defeated terrorism which was considered invincible. Therefore, defeating conspiracies against us is not a difficult task for us. We will expose those who are behind them to the people in time to come."

Whenever the country scored a decisive military victory, an untoward incident happened in the South, the President said. After the Thoppigala victory, a journalist working with an English language newspaper had been abducted, he said. When Veditalativue was captured, there had been a fire at a welfare centre for the displaced at Vavuniya. The Udayan newspaper office had come under a goon attack on the International Press Freedom Day.

"My friend Joseph Pararajasingham was killed inside a church on the Christmas day," President Rajapaksa said, "then my friend T. Maheswaran was assassinated and my government was accused of perpetrating that crime, but we revealed that the LTTE was responsible for that crime."

After the Kilinochchi victory, a private TV station had come under an attack and a journalist had been killed, the President said. The motive of the perpetrators, he said, was to bring his government into disrepute and tarnish the image of the country.

He said his government was confident of facing any challenge in defeating terrorism.