Massive ammunition pit found in Vakarai

19 January 2012 10:31 am

The largest ammunition recovery made by the police since the end of the war was detected when they found 81,500 ammunition rounds used for a various number of fire arms in a pit in the Verugal forest area in Vakarai.

The ammunition was found in 122 boxes and all were 7.6 millimetres long. The recovery was made by a special team attached to the Vakarai police.

The weapons were hidden underground and were therefore unable to be tracked. The recovery was made after gathering valuable information from the area.

The operations were conducted following information received from the public and LTTE cadres in custody and based on information provided by the State Intelligence Service (SIS) these stocks of weapons had been hidden in the area.

A large number of arms and ammunition hidden underground by the LTTE in the Northern and Eastern Provinces were recovered by the armed forces and the Special Task Force (STF) since the conflict ended in May last year.  

Security forces are continuing their search operations especially in the two provinces which were once strong foot holds of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) and large quantities of buried weapons exist as a result of it. (Supun Dias)