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Pirapaharan lives 40 ft. under

Tamil Tiger Leader Velupillai Pirapaharan lives more than 40 ft. underground in a massive, well provided, and seemingly impenetrable bunker complex hewn from rocks in the middle of a thick jungle in northeast Sri Lanka.

Adele Balasingham, the Australian-born wife of the late Anton Balasingham, the LTTE's ideologue, describes Pirapaharan's office cum residence in the Alampil jungles, in her book The Will To Freedom.

'Our cadres led us down the steps into a room about thirty to forty feet underground. To our amazement, we could see that this subterranean haven of tunnels and rooms had been chiseled out of the underground rocks. Our room had been carved out, high enough to stand up in and move around comfortably.'

'Mr.Pirapaharan's room was even deeper underground than ours,' she writes.

'Low lying roofs constructed over the bunkers, and banks to divert water, prevented the monsoon rains from pouring in and flooding the bunkers.'

'Stronger than concrete, this underground granite structure stood up to the heavy downpour of the monsoon rains when the entire jungle turned into a muddy quagmire.'

'Since we were deep into the earth, where the sun's heat has no access, the room was absolutely freezing, particularly at night. My bones ached from the cold and I wondered how it could be endured over a sustained period of time. But obviously it had been, and without any ill-effects,' she notes.

The expansive complex was more like a village than a camp. It had been cleared of virgin jungle. The LTTE's cadres had pulled out rocks and cleared the foliage except the giant trees, which gave it good cover. Sixty to seventy foot wells had been dug, only to find that there was no water!