Tag: news

COLOMBO, March 6, 2007 (AFP) – Sri Lanka’s police admitted Tuesday that its own security personnel have been involved in kidnappings for ransom and vowed to crack down on mounting abductions and killings of civilians. Colombo also faced censure over the killing of 17 local employees of a French charity in August. Scandinavian monitors blamed […]

March 3, 2007 (AFP) – Sri Lanka is stepping up security for diplomats following a Tamil rebel attack against a helicopter in which envoys were travelling, the foreign ministry said Saturday. The ambassadors of Italy and the United States and a UN coordinator were among more than a dozen people wounded in a shell attack […]

March 3, 2007 (AFP) – The bodies of five men shot in the head with their hands tied together and blindfolded were found Saturday by Sri Lankan police, who called the deaths an apparent “execution-style killing”. The grisly find in a marsh at Kandana, 15 kilometres (10 miles) north of the capital, was made after […]

JAKARTA, March 2, 2007 (AFP) – Indonesia said Friday that dozens of asylum seekers from Sri Lanka would be sent home and not allowed to stay if Australia decides to send the group back its way.Australia picked up 85 boat people last month after they passed through Indonesia and are holding them on Christmas Island […]

COLOMBO, March 2, 2007 (AFP) – Sri Lankan war planes bombed a suspected Tiger rebel camp in the northeast on Friday as part of an increased offensive against the guerrillas, a defence official said.“Using MIG 27 jet planes, the air force took Tiger targets in the Thoppigala jungles,” military spokesman Brigadier Prasad Samarasinghe told AFP, […]

COLOMBO, March 1, 2007 (AFP) – A Sri Lankan air force trainee pilot and his instructor were killed Thursday when their plane crashed, an official said Thursday. The Chinese-built training aircraft crashed at Anuradhapura, 200 kilometers (125 miles) north of the capital during a routine exercise, an airforce official said, adding that investigations were underway. […]

COLOMBO, March 1, 2007 (AFP) – Sri Lankan jets bombed suspected Tamil Tiger positions in northeast Sri Lanka on Thursday, a day after Colombo stepped up an offensive against the rebels, killing at least 18 people, a statement said.Air force MIG Jet aircraft attacked a Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) training camp in Vavuniya, […]

UNITED NATIONS, Feb 27, 2007 (AFP) – UN chief Ban Ki-moon on Tuesday condemned a Tamil rebel artillery attack in Sri Lanka that injured several foreign diplomats, including a UN official, taking part in a humanitarian assessment mission.“The secretary general condemns the shelling” by the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) in Batticaloa district, “which […]

February, 28 (LBO) – Sri Lanka Navy has fired on an identified ship off the island’s south coast after the ship ignored an order to halt and fired on a government vessel a Navy spokesman said. The spokesman said the vessel which had been contacted by Navy officials had given false identification and turned to […]

February 28 (LBO) – Sri Lanka’s use of anti-terror law against the media has been condemned by the Reporters without Borders (RSF) which called for the release of a media official arrested two days ago. RSF called for the release of Dushantha Basnayake, financial director of Standard Newspapers, which publishes the Sinhalese-language weekly Mawbima, who […]

Feb 27, 2007 (AFP) – The ambassadors of the United States and Italy were wounded Tuesday in an artillery attack by suspected Tamil rebels in eastern Sri Lanka, Human Rights Minister Mahinda Samarasinghe told AFP.Samarasinghe, who was accompanying a group of Colombo-based diplomats to the district of Batticaloa, said the attack came shortly after one […]