Category: Politics

July 14, 2006 (AFP) – France Friday asked Sri Lanka’s warring parties to resume peace negotiations amid an escalation of fighting and said a peace deal was still possible in the embattled South Asian nation.The outgoing French ambassador Jean Bernard de Vaivre said the rebel Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) must stop using violence […]

July 14, 2006 (AFP) – Two powerful Claymore mines were found in Sri Lanka’s central city of Kandy and were defused by the military, the defence ministry said Friday.The two bombs were discovered Thursday night along a street in Kandy where the government’s defence spokesman Keheliya Rambukwella has a private residence, the ministry said. It […]

July 14, 2006 (AFP) – Two soldiers and a sailor were killed by the Tamil Tigers in Sri Lanka on Friday, authorities said, as a militant nationalist group denounced the government for allowing medical treatment to a leading rebel.The two soldiers were killed when the rebel Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) fired mortar bombs […]

July 14, 2006 (AFP) – July 14, 2006 (AFP) – Sri Lanka endured its worst fighting in almost a month on Friday as 12 soldiers and four Tamil Tiger rebels were killed in a fierce exchange of mortar fire, military officials and the Red Cross said.The fighting around the rebel-dominated village of Vakaneri was described […]

July 13, 2006 (AFP) – Sri Lanka’s president ordered protection for a Tiger rebel official undergoing medical treatment in Colombo despite severely strained relations between the two sides, a senior minister said Thursday.Media Minister Anura Yapa said President Mahinda Rajapakse had agreed to provide escorts to the Tamil Tiger media coordinator after he was brought […]

SINGAPORE, July 12, 2006 (AFP) – From Bali to Sri Lanka, the Philippines and Mumbai, Asian civilians are increasingly at risk of dying in bombings by militants, analysts said Wednesday. “Actually there has been a very significant shift in the terrorist strategy,” said Kusnanto Anggoro, researcher at Jakarta’s Centre for Strategic and International Studies.“They are […]

COLOMBO, July 12, 2006 (AFP) – Sri Lanka Wednesday announced it is forming a special unit of 1,000 men to bolster already tight security arrangements in the main city of Colombo amid fears of Tamil Tiger suicide bombings. Defence ministry spokesman Prasad Samarasinghe said the army had begun enlisting 1,000 soldiers for the special Colombo […]

COLOMBO, July 12, 2006 (AFP) – Sri Lankan President Mahinda Rajapakse urged the international community Wednesday to unite and fight terrorism following a series of bomb blasts in neighbouring India that killed more than 180 people. “Yesterday’s bomb attacks in India draw attention to the need for cooperation among all countries on the need to […]

July 12, 2006 (AFP) – A Tamil Tiger rebel spokesman suffered a heart attack and was being rushed to a hospital in the Sri Lankan capital Wednesday for urgent treatment, a government minister told AFP.Velayudam Dayanidi, better known as Daya Master, was being brought to Colombo from the northern rebel-held town of Kilinochchi to undergo […]

July 12, 2006 (AFP) – Two policemen were killed Wednesday in a landmine attack by suspected Tamil Tiger guerrillas in Sri Lanka’s northern Jaffna peninsula, defence officials here said.The constables were travelling in a pick-up truck when it hit a Claymore mine at Nallur in the Jaffna peninsula, the officials said. The attack came a […]

July 11, 2006 (AFP) – A government soldier was killed Tuesday in a powerful bomb explosion near a Tamil Tiger war cemetery in Sri Lanka’s northern peninsula of Jaffna, officials said.The soldier, on a routine patrol, was killed as the blast ripped through the area at Kodikamam, a military official in the area said when […]

COLOMBO, July 11, 2006 (AFP) – Sri Lanka’s president Tuesday offered 1.25 billion dollars to rebuild embattled regions and asked his advisors to come up with a power-sharing plan to end decades of ethnic bloodshed. President Mahinda Rajapakse told a 15-member multi-ethnic panel appointed by him last week to come up with a formula that […]