¡¡¡¡COLOMBO, January 6 (Xinhuanet) -- A police raid on Wednesday on an army officer's residence in the southern suburbs of Sri Lankan capital Colombo has revealed that trained government soldiers ventured into Tamil Tiger rebel held areas to carry out daring attack on them.
¡¡¡¡The Sunday Times said that six army personnel including a captain and four solider and a former Tamil rebels who later joined the army were arrested during the raid belong to the Long Range Patrol group.
¡¡¡¡The six now still in custody in central city of Kandy are members of the group which has been successful in elimination some top leaders of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) including Thambirasa Kuhasanthan, the LTTE's military intelligence wing leader in east Batticaloa area in June last year.
¡¡¡¡The men had been forced to abandon a very important mission in Batticaloa last month as the government and LTTE started a one-month ceasefire.
¡¡¡¡The police unearthed a massive cache of arms and ammunition during the raid on a safe house in an army officer's residence on Wednesday.
¡¡¡¡Previous reports said that police claim that the arms were to be used to assassinate Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe but the army claims that they belonged to the intelligence unit of the army to be used in an emergency.
¡¡¡¡Following wide newspaper publicity over the issue, army spokesman Brigadier Sarath Karunaratne said army personnel arrested in connection with the arms cache were involved in army duties at the time of their arrest. These duties, which they were unable to disclose due to security reasons, did not involve any plot to assassinate any VIPs. Enditem