Troops capture key pass

Sri Lankan troops on Friday handed the Tamil Tiger rebels their second major defeat in a week, capturing the strategic Elephant Pass base that links the main island to the Jaffna Peninsula, the president said.

"Today evening our troops liberated Elephant Pass fully," President Mahinda Rajapaksa said in a televized address, exactly a week after he announced the capture of the separatist rebels' self-proclaimed capital of Kilinochchi.

Elephant Pass, site of one of the government's worst losses in the 25-year war, is as strategic as it is symbolic. Its capture frees the main north-south A-9 road from the Tigers for the first time in 23 years, he said.