Category: Defense

Aug 09, 2012 (LBO) – Sri Lanka has unearthed over eight hundred thousand mines and improvised explosive devices from the island’s former war zone since the thirty year conflict ended in 2009, a top government official said. Secretary to the ministry of Defence and urban development Gotabaya Rajapaksa told an international defence conference in Colombo […]

July 13, 2012 (LBO) –Sri Lanka Army’s involvement in civilian affairs in the former war zone has become ‘very minimal’ three years after it crushed the separatist Tamil Tigers and helped restore normalcy in the region, a top military officer said. Army chief Lieutenant General Jagath Jayasuriya told reporters that the Army is confined to […]

May 20, 2012 (LBO) – Sri Lanka’s President Mahinda Rajapakse has signed papers to pardon jailed ex-army chief Sarath Fonseka, his aide said Sunday, a day after the island marked three-years since defeating the Tamil Tigers. Rajapakse inked the papers on Friday evening and passed them to his chief-of-staff, his spokesman Bandula Jayasekera said. The […]

May 19, 2012 (LBO) – Sri Lanka’s president on Saturday, rejected demands to remove military camps in the island’s north and urged international co-operation to modernise the country. We must ask if we in a position to remove the armed forces camps in the north and reduce our attention national security. That is not possible, […]

May 17, 2012 (LBO) – Sri Lanka’s cabinet of ministers on Thursday agreed to free jailed former army chief Sarath Fonseka, President Mahinda Rajapakse’s aide said, paving the way for the retired four star general’s imminent release. Fonseka lead troops in a spectacular military campaign against the Tamil Tiger rebels that ended the island’s decades […]

May 02, 2012 (LBO) – A senior United States official in charge of security assistance programs and policy had visited Sri Lanka and for talks with defence officials and to see the progress on de-mining, the US embassy in Colombo said. He had also visited Kilinochchi and Vavuniya, where a 30-year civil war ended in […]

Jan 11, 2012 (LBO) – Sri Lanka is maintaining high defence spending and sizeable military to guard against any possible resumption of violence by Tamil Tiger separatists who are trying to regroup, a senior defence official said. The island’s intelligence services had picked up evidence of attempts to reactivate the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam […]

Dec 07, 2011 (LBO) – State-run Sri Lankan Airlines is planning flights to Nepal and Bangladesh in 2012 and is increasing frequencies to India from December 23, the carrier said in a statement. Flights to Chennai will increase to four frequencies a day or 28 a week, from December 23. “We are developing Colombo into […]

Dec 02, 2011 (LBO) – Bell Helicopter, a Textron Inc. company said it has delivered two Bell 412 helicopters to the Sri Lanka Air Force at its facility in Piney Flats, Tennessee in the United States. The two new helicopters from Bell, which had previously supplied a fleet of transport helicopters to the air force […]

November 4, 2011 (AFP) – Sri Lanka’s war-time minefields were two-thirds smaller than initially estimated and most have been cleared since the country’s ethnic conflict ended in 2009, the military said on Friday. The army said it had originally estimated mine-infested areas totalled some 6,215 square kilometres (2,399 square miles) in the island’s embattled northeast. […]

September 30, 2011 (AFP) – Sri Lanka wrapped up its two-year rehabilitation of surrendered Tamil Tiger rebels with the re-uniting Friday of 1,800 men and women with their families. President Mahinda Rajapakse addressed the last of the 12,000 former members of the separatist Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) to pass through the programme at […]

September 26, 2011 (AFP) – A Sri Lankan general serving as a UN diplomat in New York is prepared to face a US court to deny charges his men committed war crimes during the island’s civil war, reports said Monday. A civil case has been filed in New York on behalf of two people whose […]