Category: Politics

May 7 (AFP) – A senior Japanese envoy began talks with government officials Sunday to try to save Sri Lanka’s peace process as Tamil rebels said troops abducted eight men in the island’s north. The men had slept overnight at a Hindu temple after a ceremony in the Jaffna peninsula before troops allegedly took them […]

NEW DELHI, May 7 (AFP) – Sri Lanka’s Foreign Minister Mangala Samaraweera has arrived in India to discuss his country’s peace process which is under strain after a surge in violence, officials said Sunday.During his two-day stay, the minister is scheduled to meet Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and foreign secretary Shyam Saran. Ahead of the […]

May 7, 2006 (AFP) – Sri Lanka imposed a curfew in the restive Jaffna peninsula Sunday as a Japanese envoy began talks with government officials to try to save a faltering peace process amid escalating violence.The security forces clamped the indefinite curfew ahead of demonstrations called by residents to protest Thursday’s killing of seven men […]

TRINCOMALEE, Sri Lanka, May 7, 2006 (AFP) – Sri Lanka’s Tamil Tigers are increasingly taking their fight to the sea thanks to a secretive and lethal rebel “navy”, a rarity among the world’s guerrilla forces, observers say.Founded in the early 1990s, the “Sea Tigers” claim to have sunk dozens of naval vessels over the years […]

May 6, 2006 (AFP) – Sri Lanka is seeking foreign forensic help to establish whether a female suicide bomber who tried to kill the country’s army chief was indeed pregnant as she claimed, investigators said Saturday. Tests by local laboratories proved negative and the investigators are now trying to secure the help of forensic experts […]

May 6, 2006 (AFP) – A Japanese peace envoy was to arrive in Sri Lanka for talks Saturday as Scandinavian monitors said violence between government forces and Tamil Tiger rebels was out of control.Tokyo’s special peace envoy Yasushi Akashi was to hold talks with President Mahinda Rajapakse and would also try to meet leaders of […]

COLOMBO, May 5 (AFP) – Diplomats prepared to talk peace but on the ground Friday violence escalated in Sri Lanka as military officials reported fresh air and naval clashes with separatist rebels.The clashes followed the shooting deaths of seven civilians in the northern Jaffna peninsula Thursday after a grenade attack wounded three soldiers in the […]

May 5 – (AFP) – A Sri Lankan navy gunboat attacked Tamil Tiger boats off the island’s northwestern waters Friday and destroyed at least one craft, military officials here said.More than 200 people have died in the last month in a series of tit-for-tat attacks between Sri Lankan government and rebel forces despite a ceasefire […]

May 4 (AFP) – Two policemen and six others were killed Thursday in separate clashes in northern Sri Lanka where a fragmentation mine also exploded but caused no casualties, officials said.Six men travelling in two three-wheeler taxis were shot dead by security forces when they tried to attack a military sentry point at Nelliyadi in […]

May 03(AFP) – Gunmen stormed a Tamil newspaper office in Sri Lanka’s Jaffna peninsula killing two people and further raising the toll in the bloodiest month since a 2002 truce took effect, officials said Wednesday.More than 60,000 people have been killed in the island’s drawn out Tamil separatist conflict in the past three decades. -Ian […]

May 3 (AFP) – The bullet-riddled bodies of three men were found at a village in northern Sri Lanka Wednesday as tensions mount in the region, police said. The victims were dumped at Chettikulam in the Vavuniya district where government troops and Tamil Tiger rebels clashed in recent weeks. “We don’t know who these people […]