Category: Defense

MUMBAI, July 13, 2009 (AFP) – In 1979, Don Ward opened a small club in London to provide a stage for the best of Britain’s undiscovered comic talent.After 30 successful years, he now wants to do the same in India. Ward is taking The Comedy Store out of Britain for the first time, opening a […]

WELIKANDA (AFP) – They begin each day saluting the national flag of the country they had vowed to defeat or die trying.Gone are the cyanide capsules that, like all Tamil Tiger rebels, they had worn around their necks for use if captured by the Sri Lankan military. In their place hang religious symbols — a […]

July 5, 2009 (AFP) – A Sri Lankan soldier was shot dead by a Tamil rebel in the island’s east, the first military fatality after the crushing of the guerrilla leadership in May, the army said on Sunday.A Tiger rebel grabbed the gun of a soldier and opened fire as he tried to search a […]

June 24, 2009 (LBO) – Sri Lanka is hosting a South Asia workshop organised with the United States to prevent terrorist groups from acquiring nuclear weapons or trafficking in nuclear materials, the foreign ministry said.The workshop, on the implementation of UN Security Council Resolution 1540 dealing with non-state actors and weapons of mass destruction (WMD), […]

June 21, 2009 (AFP) – Sri Lanka is pouring more troops into former rebel-held areas in the east of the island to hunt down remnants of the Tamil Tigers following their defeat in the north, a state-run weekly said Sunday.The Tigers have admitted that they lost their top leader Velupillai Prabhakaran in a final battle […]

June 15, 2009 (AFP) – Sri Lankan troops have recovered the first submarine believed to have been used by the defeated Tamil Tiger rebels, the military said Monday.Troops found the 24-foot (7.2-metre) submersible on the coast of the northeastern district of Mullaittivu, where the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) were defeated last month, ending […]

June 9, 2009 (AFP) – Sri Lanka’s government on Tuesday extended tough anti-terror laws, arguing that remnants of the defeated Tamil Tiger rebels could still try to stage a comeback.Prime Minister Ratnasiri Wickremanayake told parliament that the government wanted to extend the state of emergency by a month despite last month’s defeat of the Liberation […]

June 7, 2009 (AFP) – Sri Lanka’s president on Sunday marked a key Buddhist celebration by granting a pardon to 585 jailed military deserters, officials said. In 2003, the government moved to legally discharge from the security forces 51,000 deserters. Tens of thousands were killed in Sri Lanka’s decades-old Tamil separatist conflict. The pardon applied […]

June 4, 2009 (AFP) – Sri Lanka’s navy Thursday seized a foreign-owned ship loaded with medical, food and other supplies for war-hit civilians, saying the vessel had entered its territorial waters illegally.The supplies, arranged by supporters of the Tamil rebel cause, were loaded onto a ship in the English port of Ipswich in April — […]

SINGAPORE, May 31, 2009 (AFP) – Sri Lanka appealed Sunday for international support in dismantling the global political network of the Tamil Tiger rebels after declaring a full military victory over the separatist movement. Foreign Minister Rohitha Bogollagama told a high-level security forum in Singapore that Colombo needed help in disabling the Tigers’ “powerful political […]

GENEVA, May 27, 2009 (AFP) – The UN Human Rights Council ended a special session on Sri Lanka’s conflict on Wednesday with diplomats failing to bridge an Asian-Western divide over whether to probe alleged abuses.“There is no reason for a probe.These are political statements made by various people. I don’t think we should get excited […]