Category: Defense

COLOMBO, Aug 12, 2006 (AFP) – Sri Lankan troops and Tamil Tiger rebels shelled each other’s positions in the island’s embattled northeast Saturday, killing at least two people and wounding many more, officials and rebels said. The rebel Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) pounded the port city of Trincomalee early in the day, killing […]

WASHINGTON, Aug 12, 2006 (AFP) – Sri Lanka’s international donors have expressed serious concern over a growing humanitarian crisis stemming from the island’s ethnic conflict and called for an immediate cessation of hostilities. The United States, Japan, the European Union and Norway said they were “deeply concerned” by continued violence which they feared was “seriously […]

KANTALAI, Sri Lanka, Aug 12, 2006 (AFP) – At an overcrowded mosque in Sri Lanka’s northeast, thousands of Muslim refugees displaced by fighting between government troops and Tiger rebels gather to console each other. His message blared from megaphones outside the mosque, but the men were not easily placated, demanding protection from the government, and […]

COLOMBO, Aug 11, 2006 (AFP) – Tamil Tigers Friday warned of a humanitarian crisis after 42,000 people were displaced by a surge in violence that has left Sri Lanka’s truce in tatters, as fighting erupted on two new fronts. There were similar gatherings elsewhere too.” The latest fighting has been the worst in Sri Lanka […]

TRINCOMALEE, Sri Lanka, Aug 11, 2006 (AFP) – S. Ganesh was a 16-year veteran aid worker who had followed Sri Lanka’s Tamil insurgency since it began, so his wife thought little of his routine trip near a conflict zone last week. But six days after he left his modest home on July 31, his body […]

COLOMBO, Aug 11, 2006 (AFP) – Three villagers were killed in Sri Lanka on Friday when they tried to prise open an unexploded mortar found near a military munitions dump that exploded overnight, doctors said. The blast came amid heavy long-range attacks in the same district where troops and Tamil Tiger rebels had been locked […]

COLOMBO, Aug 11, 2006 (AFP) – The head of a French charity vowed Friday to “get to the bottom” of the massacre of 17 employees in Sri Lanka and said his group was reassessing its operations given the escalating conflict there. The 13 men and four women, aged 23 to 54, worked mostly as engineers […]

COLOMBO, Aug 11, 2006 (AFP) – Sri Lankan troops shelled Tamil Tiger positions in the northern peninsula of Jaffna Friday shortly after launching air strikes elsewhere in the island, the guerrillas said.The military began firing artillery across a de facto front line at Muhamalai in Jaffna, the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) military spokesman […]

KANTALAI, Sri Lanka, Aug 10, 2006 (AFP) – Sri Lankan war planes bombed Tamil Tiger positions as the two sides shelled each other around a disputed waterway near here Thursday, leaving at least two soldiers dead and 26 wounded. “We are on a defensive operation,” spokesman Upali Rajapakse said. “We had to retaliate when our […]

KANTALAI, Sri Lanka, Aug 10, 2006 (AFP) – Sri Lankan warplanes bombed Tiger positions as fighting broke out again near a disputed waterway in the troubled northeast Thursday, leaving more than 50 people dead according to the rebels. Some 30,000 people who fled their homes last week because of fighting between troops and the Tigers […]

KANTALAI, Sri Lanka, Aug 10, 2006 (AFP) – Doctor Iranthi de Silva has worked for 15 hours straight, battling fatigue and stress as casualties in Sri Lanka’s strife-torn northeast mounted Thursday. A brief lull in the chaotic, makeshift emergency room at the Kantalai Base Hospital allowed her to sit down. But the distant wailing of […]

Aug 9, 2006 (AFP) – Tamil Tiger rebels are insisting that truce monitors from EU countries quit Sri Lanka despite efforts by peace broker Norway to persuade them to drop their demand, the government said Wednesday.Norway’s top peace envoy Jon Hanssen-Bauer told the government that the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) were demanding monitors […]