The International Truth and Justice Project has published a report alleging that more than 300 severely wounded LTTE fighters, left behind in a single building when the Sri Lankan Army overran Ananthapuram in April 2009, were killed after the position fell.

Every allegation in this article is the ITJP’s. None has been tested in court, and no Sri Lankan government, army or ministry response is reported in the source.

The report, The Battle of Ananthapuram, was published on 28 October, Tamil Guardian reported. It draws on the testimony of seven LTTE survivors, who the group says are describing the battle publicly for the first time, alongside the Sri Lankan Ministry of Defence’s own situation reports, state media coverage and contemporaneous accounts.

The ITJP says it had initially believed nobody survived the battle to bear witness. The former cadres now live abroad and spoke on condition of confidentiality.

What the report describes

By early 2009 the LTTE was in retreat. Ananthapuram, a settlement east of Puthukkudiyiruppu, became its last stronghold — an area cadres called the “Box”, which the report says shrank to roughly two square kilometres holding around 800 cadres, about half already seriously wounded.

From 30 March, according to the report, a brigade of the 58th Division under Brigadier Shavendra Silva and a brigade of the 53rd Division under Kamal Gunaratne, working with Task Force 8, launched a pincer movement. The prongs met at Pachchai Pulmoddai on 1 April, closing the last route in or out.

On the evening of 2 April, the report says, LTTE commanders moved around 350 cadres with severe injuries into the movement’s computer centre, a concrete-roofed building in the eastern corner. The following night those who could still move attempted to break out; the wounded were left behind.

One survivor, himself shot in the collarbone, told the ITJP he addressed more than 300 wounded and offered to take anyone who could move. Twenty came, using sticks as crutches, with ten rifles between them. Five got through the first Army line alive.

“The injured were alive when I left. They had no rifles or explosives or cyanide,” another survivor said.

About 150 cadres escaped in total. The Box was overrun before dawn on 5 April.

The arithmetic the report rests on

The ITJP’s central argument is a discrepancy in the Army’s own figures.

On 7 April 2009 the Sri Lankan Army said it had recovered 625 LTTE bodies. With around 800 trapped and about 150 escaping, the report says, that figure closely matches the number left behind.

But Ministry of Defence situation reports on 5 April recorded only around 260 bodies found scattered across the battlefield, and made no mention of troops finding hundreds of wounded people in one place.

The only way to reconcile the Army’s own count with the survivors’ accounts, the ITJP concludes, is that troops “walked in as victors” and killed the wounded. State broadcaster Rupavahini aired footage on 5 April 2009 showing the computer centre blackened and still smoking.

This is an inference drawn by the ITJP from two of the military’s own published figures. The report does not claim a witness saw the killings.

The doctor

When the able-bodied left, the wounded were left in the care of an LTTE-trained doctor known as Dr Sathiya, who one survivor said “refused to leave his patients.”

The accounts of his fate conflict. A field medic from the same eight-person unit told the ITJP that Dr Sathiya was “captured alive” and that it later became known the Army had used him to identify LTTE bodies before he “disappeared”. Another cadre, in radio contact with medics until 3 April, said he was killed in the battle. His fate has never been confirmed.

The report says the Army handed over no prisoners and no bodies after the battle, and that families still hope some of those who fought there may be alive in secret detention.

Weapons allegations

Survivors described the use of white phosphorus and cluster munitions, as well as weapons they could not identify. A medic estimated about a third of the injuries he saw were consistent with white phosphorus burns. Others described a blast that killed cadres without leaving wounds — an effect the report says is consistent with thermobaric weapons.

These are survivor recollections reported by the ITJP, not forensic findings.

The report’s legal analysis finds reasonable grounds to investigate war crimes, including the murder and cruel treatment of persons hors de combat, the denial of quarter and attacks on medical facilities, in violation of Common Article 3 of the Geneva Conventions. It says the evidence warrants examining whether those who commanded the 58th and 53rd Divisions bear responsibility under Article 28 of the Rome Statute, the command responsibility provision.

Shavendra Silva went on to become Army Commander and Chief of Defence Staff. He has been barred from entering the United States since 2020 and was sanctioned by the United Kingdom in March 2025. Kamal Gunaratne later became Defence Secretary. The source carries no comment from either officer on this report, and neither has been charged over Ananthapuram.

ITJP Executive Director Yasmin Sooka said in a statement: “For years, we believed no one had survived Ananthapuram to bear witness. These survivors have now broken that silence.” She added: “Military victory confers no license to kill the wounded and seventeen years of impunity cannot extinguish criminal responsibility,” calling on Sri Lanka to open its military records to independent scrutiny.

Not reported

The source carries no response from the Sri Lankan government, the Ministry of Defence, the Army, or either named officer. It does not say whether the ITJP sought comment before publication.

The seven survivors are anonymous, and the report as described does not say how their accounts were corroborated against one another, how they were identified, or when the interviews took place. It gives no independent verification of the weapons allegations and no forensic or physical evidence.

It does not say whether the ITJP has submitted the report to any prosecutor, court or UN body, or what it expects to follow. Sri Lanka is not a party to the Rome Statute, which the report invokes — the source does not address what practical route to prosecution exists.

Single source. Tamil Guardian is a verified outlet for this desk, but no Sri Lankan newsroom had filed on the report when this was written: the Daily Mirror’s breaking-news listing, the Hiru News homepage rail and the NewsFirst rail carried nothing on it. Ada Derana has returned an HTTP 403 block to this desk for some 48 consecutive days. This desk has not read the underlying report, and reports here only what Tamil Guardian attributes to it. Given the gravity of the allegations and the single-sourcing, this article should be read as an account of what the ITJP has alleged, not as an established record of what happened.