A batch of 95 Tamil women soldiers of the Sri Lanka army held their passing out parade at the security force Headquarters in the former Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam stronghold of Kilinochchi in the north.
Asserting that Lankan military operations in Tamil-dominated northern areas were aimed at liberating the region from 'fascist and dictatorial control of LTTE terrorists' Colombo asked India not to be influenced by the 'malicious propaganda' of Tiger sympathisers.
Police Special Task Force commandos repulsed an attack against their Pullumalai base on Saturday morning and inflicted heavy losses on the guerrillas, an STF official said.
'If the army says sit we have to sit and if they say stand we have to stand. We were better off under the LTTE.'
Forty one-year-old Arumugam Rajeevan has been charged with being a member of a terrorist organisation, providing support or resources to a terrorist outfit and making an asset available to a proscribed entity.
Sri Lanka President Mahinda Rajapaksa has debunked international criticism over the treatment of the island nation's Tamil minority population.
The powerful bomb blast is believed to be triggered by a suicide bomber.
India on Friday said it has asked Sri Lanka to take "effective measures" to address the concerns of displaced Tamils, as relations between the two neighbours would hinge on the issue.
The fuel cost will come down if rockets are launched from Kulasekarapattinam as they will have a straight trajectory and need not have to avoid Sri Lanka, which is being done by rockets flown from Sriharikota.
India has once again pressed for the devolution of powers to the provinces under the 13th amendment (13A) of the Sri Lankan constitution and the system of provincial councils as a meaningful step towards better representation of the island's Tamil minority.
From the well-known to the little-known, most faces of Tamil cinema ensured they were present for a cause that has been dominating not only state politics but also national politics, with even a special envoy in the ranks of External Affairs Minister flying in to apprise the Tamil Nadu chief minister of the steps taken by the Centre on the issue.
India on Thursday asked Sri Lanka to move beyond the resettlement of people displaced due to the civil war in the country's north and find a political solution to the long-pending Tamil question.
Wickremesinghe is the first Sri Lankan president to be elected by Parliament following a vote.
Sri Lanka has resettled over 1,000 internally displaced Tamils in their towns and villages in the country's war-torn northern region.
In a letter to Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, Karunanidhi said, "There is no requirement of joint patrolling at this juncture. The issue of joint patrolling was once discussed and did not find favour with our government due to a number of reasons."
President Gotabaya Rajapaksa on Monday fired Basil Rajapaksa from his post and invited the Opposition parties to join a unity Cabinet to tackle the raging public anger against the hardships caused by the economic crisis.
Congress on Sunday decried "maligning" of the Prime Minister and party-led UPA government by pro-Tamil groups in the state over the Sri Lankan Tamils issue and expressed confidence that India would vote in favour of the US-backed resolution against Sri Lanka in the UNHRC.
At least 60 fishermen from Tamil Nadu were arrested by Sri Lankan Navy personnel while fishing near Katchatheevu on Thursday, an official from fishermen association said.
Three Sri Lankan sailors and four Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam cadres were killed in a pre-dawn attack by Tamil rebels on a navy outpost in Mannar on Wednesday.The Tigers claimed that the area was brought under their control for a few hours after they captured arms and military gadgets, including a radar equipment."According to the available information, four sea tigers, including their leader Sirimaran, have died in the battle," the Defence Ministry said.
Mahinda Rajapaksa is a democratically elected leader who received a massive mandate of 71% of votes, and he owes nothing to Delhi or Washington for staging his political comeback, observes Ambassador M K Bhadrakumar.
After talks in Oslo, the parties decided to explore a political solution founded on internal self-determination based on a federal structure within a united Sri Lanka.
The arrest came as the group was departing Point Pedro in the northern Jaffna peninsula, Naval spokesman Commander Kosala Warnakulasuriya said, adding that among the arrested, 38 were men, 28 women and 14 children.
The security forces captured and destroyed the four bases of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam in the jungles of Thoppigala in Batticaloa district during an offensive late Friday night and early Saturday.
Taking up the matter with Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Chief Minister E K Palaniswami, in a letter, said the state government was "extremely" concerned over such incidents
United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki Moon on Saturday witnessed the conditions of tens of thousands of displaced Tamil civilians in northern Sri Lanka as he appealed to a triumphant government to 'heal the wounds' left by three decades of ethnic conflict. The Secretary General visited the camps in Vavuniya district today, where more than 300,000 people are staying, after escaping from the battle lines between government forces and Tamil Tigers.
Bringing the latest instance of the arrest of TN fishermen to the attention of Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Stalin said 12 of them were arrested on Thursday and two mechanised fishing boats were seized by the Lankan Navy.
If Modi was really keen on Katchatheevu, he could have reclaimed that island during his 10 years in office, he said.
A former Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam child soldier-turned-politician was acquitted by a court in Sri Lanka on Wednesday in the 2005 murder case of a senior ethnic Tamil lawmaker at the height of the country's bloody civil war.
Keen to see the decades-old ethnic crisis resolved, India on Tuesday told Sri Lanka that the "most important" issue before it was to come out with a political solution that fulfills the aspirations of the minority Tamils.
Naval gunboats intercepted the Tiger boats leading to the battle, which lasted for six hours, it said.
the Navy exchanged fire with a flotilla of Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam after the rebels attacked naval gunboats.
Will Foreign Minister Mr. Jaishankar please refer to the RTI reply dated 27-1-2015...The Reply justified the circumstances under which India acknowledged that a small island belonged to Sri Lanka," Chidambaram said.
China said it has suspended the project due to security concerns from a third party.
While Delhi was set to host the opening Test against South Africa from November 14-18, it will now host the second Test against West Indies starting October 10.
Sri Lanka on Tuesday dismissed as "fabricated lies", a report by a leading rights group alleging that its military used rape and other forms of sexual violence to torture suspected Tamil rebels since the end of the island's civil war in 2009.
'The war ended in 2009 and I believe the new generation of Tamils don't know what was going on there.' 'I felt it was my duty to tell our story.' 'Since 2009, it seems like we are sleeping.'
Ten Indian fishermen, arrested for allegedly engaged in illegal fishing in the Sri Lankan waters on Monday, will be charged with the death of a Navy sailor, who was killed in an operation to seize their trawler, authorities in Colombo said.
"It is a huge tragedy and it is unfolding all the time," said Lalith Weerathunga, secretary to the prime minister.
Sri Lankan opposition leaders on Wednesday handed over a letter to a delegation of Members of Parliament from the Indian state of Tamil Nadu that is in Colombo, complaining that they were not allowed by the government to visit the relief camps for nearly three lakh displaced Tamils.
Sri Lankan authorities have arrested 19 Indian fishermen and seized five boats when they were allegedly fishing in the country's waters. A total of 19 fishermen were arrested north of the Jaffna Delft islet late on Saturday night, navy spokesman Commander Kosala Warnakulasuriya said in Colombo on Sunday.
