COLOMBO, Nov 26: The Sri Lankan army was knocking at the gates of the LTTE’s capital of Kiilnochchi on Wednesday, a day before the Tamil Tiger chieftain Velupillai Prabhakaran was due to address his followers in Sri Lanka and abroad to mark Hero’s Day, Defence Ministry spokesman Keheliya Rambukwella said on Wednesday

The government is expected to announce on Thursday that troops have entered Kilinochchi if not completely taken it over, in order to prevent the LTTE supremo from hogging the headlines with his Hero’s Day speech.

However, enquiries revealed that while some units of the army were in the outskirts of Kilinochchi, both in the northwest and the south, the fall of the town as such was not an immediate possibility.

The army units had overcome some of the defences but much ground remained to be covered and very tough resistance had to be still overcome, informed sources said. Besides, the area is under at least four feet of rain water.

The defence ditches are filled with water, making them deadly traps for troops as well as vehicles. Incessant rain in the Wanni area in the last few days has already displaced more than 10,000 people, adding to the misery of displacement due to the war.

The Tiger rebels are entrenched inside Kilinochchi. With no civilians around (all having been evacuated to areas further east and southeast), the LTTE’s fighting cadre are expected to give a tough fight as they have been doing over the past few weeks.

PRABHARAN FASTS: Nov 26 is Mr Prabhakaran’s birthday. The LTTE chief does not “celebrate” his birthday, but “observes” it with a day-long fast, in view of the continuing struggle of the Sri Lankan Tamils to secure their rights, according to Dharmaratnam Sivaram, the scholar-journalist who has made a deep study of the Sri Lankan Tamil movement and its leaders. Sivaram was killed a few years ago by some gunmen in Colombo.