Category: Politics

COLOMBO, Aug 13, 2006 (AFP) – Sri Lankan troops and Tamil Tiger rebels traded artillery fire Sunday, a day after at least 177 people were killed in fierce battles, officials said, amid fears of a return to full-scale war.Security forces shelled positions held by the rebel Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) as sporadic face-to-face […]

COLOMBO, Aug 13, 2006 (AFP) – Sri Lankan troops and Tamil Tiger rebels waged artillery and ground battles Sunday as the weekend death toll rose to 186 by official count, but both sides said they were willing to talk peace.Policy Planning Minister Keheliya Rambukwella said the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) made an overture […]

COLOMBO, Aug 13, 2006 (AFP) – Sri Lanka’s northern Jaffna peninsula has been cut off from the rest of the island as hundreds of residents try to flee heavy fighting in the area, military officials said.Fighting that started on Friday and continued through the weekend has cut the main road connecting government-held regions of the […]

COLOMBO, Aug 13, 2006 (AFP) – Sri Lankan troops and Tamil Tiger rebels fought ground battles and artillery duels Sunday as the weekend death toll rose to 186 and the rebels denied they were ready to talk peace.Heavy fighting that started on Friday had cut off the northern Jaffna peninsula, a military official said, where […]

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) – 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 […]

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 […]