Last phase of Sri Lanka war killed 6,200 troops – govt

COLOMBO, (Reuters) – Sri Lanka has for the first  time made public its heavy casualties from the last phase of  the 25-year war, and the U.N. chief flew to the island on  Friday to push for a rapid end to a lingering humanitarian  crisis.
Officials said over 6,000 soldiers were killed and nearly  30,000 injured since a battle in July 2006 that the military  marks as the start of “Eelam War IV”, the final stage of the  war against the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE).
In the capital Colombo, tens of thousands of people marched  through the streets on Friday to parliament’s grounds for a  rally called to honour soldiers.

President Mahinda Rajapaksa, speaking to the assembled  throng, brushed off Western calls for a war crimes probe into  acts by both sides in the final months of the war.

“Since (the July 2006 battle at) Mavil Aru, 6,261 soldiers  have laid down their lives for the unitary status of the  motherland and 29,551 were wounded,” Defence Secretary Gotabaya  Rajapaksa told the state-run Independent Television Network.

Troops killed 22,000 LTTE fighters during Eelam War IV,  military spokesman Brigadier Udaya Nanayakkara said.

Sri Lanka declared total victory over the LTTE on Monday  after killing off its leadership and remaining fighters in a  climactic final battle in the northeast of the island.

Nearly 300,000 Tamil civilians who followed or were taken  by the Tigers as the military relentlessly cornered them, are  now in crowded displacement camps after fleeing in the final  months of what was Asia’s longest modern war.