"The air strikes were a sequel to the constant mortar attacks by the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam against the forward defence line of the Army," a statement from the ministry said.
According to a Pro-LTTE website, the rebels claimed they thwarted an attack from the Sri Lankan Armed Forces at Muhamalai in Jaffna peninsula on Saturday morning.
The Tigers accused the military of 'insensitivity' in carrying out the attack on the day of Balasingham's funeral.
Skeletal remains of a young girl have been identified among human remains exhumed from a mass grave in Sri Lanka's Jaffna district, a site linked to the LTTE conflict in the mid-1990s. The discovery has renewed calls for investigation into alleged war crimes.
Salman Khan opened up about professional regrets, controversies and reconciliation during the latest Weekend Ka Vaar episode of Bigg Boss 19.
Speculation was rife at Rameswaram in Tamil Nadu on Wednesday about whether the wife of Liberation Tiger of Tamil Eelam supremo V Prabhakaran arrived here, along with a group of Sri Lankan refugees, in the face of escalating violence between the Tamil Tigers and Sri Lankan forces. Police and media personnel rushed to the Mandapam refugee camp in Rameswaram after rumours claimed that Prabhakaran's wife Madhivadhani had reached the camp early on Wednesday morning.
Expressing unhappiness over India's stand on the ethnic conflict in Sri Lanka, the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam on Tuesday said the Tamil community expects New Delhi to extend its support to their 'national aspirations', even as it renewed its call for a ceasefire with Colombo. The Tamil Tigers also refused to lay down arms for resuming political dialogue with the Sri Lankan government to resolve the 30-year-old ethnic conflict.
September is going to be an exciting month in theatres.
The Tamil Tigers are ready for ceasefire if the Sri Lankan government is willing to halt its military offensive against them, a pro-Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam political party said on Tuesday.
Nine Lankan soldiers were also killed.
Sri Lanka offered virtual amnesty to Tamil Tigers who surrender to troops on Thursday, but rejected an appeal by US-led donors to declare a 'no-fire' period and initiate a political dialogue with the beleaguered rebels.
The defence ministry said the students carried the grenade, which exploded accidentally and caused their deaths.\n
Naval gunboats intercepted the Tiger boats leading to the battle, which lasted for six hours, it said.
Karuna Amman, a former lieutenant of slain Liberation Tiges of Tamil Eelam chief Velupillai Prabhakaran and now a federal minister favours tapping of moderates among the Tamil Tigers who are "sincerely interested" in a just and peaceful solution to the ethnic problem in Sri Lanka.
The latest fighting came a day after heavy clashes in the east of the island where 20 people were killed.
The Sri Lankan government on Tuesday allowed nearly 1.30 lakh Tamil civilians housed in refugees camps in northern part of the island country to visit their relatives, as authorities lifted restrictions on their movement.
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.
Targeting the 'support network' of the Tamil Tigers, the United States on Wednesday designated a US-based charity group as a 'front' of the banned Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam and ordered freezing of its assets. The Tamil Foundation has been designated under 'Executive Order 13224', which "targets terrorists and those providing support to terrorists or acts of terrorism," the US Department of Treasury said in a press statement.
Air Force spokesman, Group Captain Ajantha Silva confirmed that the air force had bombed some targets in the LTTE-held areas in the Eastern province, but refused to divulge what they were.
"A member of the LTTE is monitored from the moment he lands on Indian soil and is unaware that he is being tracked by the police. We allow him to wander for a while before catching him red-handed with the material as well as his contacts."
The navy engaged a flotilla of Tamil Tiger boats off the island's northeast and sank one boat, killing 15 rebels.
Over five Sri Lankan Air Force personnel were killed and two MI-24 helicopters damaged in a pre-dawn attack by Tamil Tiger rebels on an air base at the North-Central Anuradhapura district in Sri Lanka, the military said. ''First a group of LTTE cadres infiltrated the Anuradhapura SLAF Base and launched the initial attack around 3.20 am. Later, at least two LTTE light aircrafts carried out an air attack on the base, destroying two MI-24 helicopters,'' military spokesman said.
The army attributed the killings to factional fighting within the LTTE.
The latest clash came as the Red Cross pulled its staff away from frontlines dividing Sri Lankan troops and Tamil Tigers elsewhere in the island's north amid an escalation of fighting.
The Times accessed confidential United Nations documents that record nearly 7000 civilian deaths in the no-fire zone up till the end of April. UN sources told the paper that the toll surged from this point onwards, and an average of 1000 civilians were killed each day till May 19, the day after the LTTE supremo V Prabhakaran himself was killed by the armed forces
Japan's special peace envoy to Sri Lanka Yasushi Akashi offered to host the talks after the government said it was no longer insisting negotiations must be held within the island
As many as 18 soldiers were killed in Puloly in two similar attacks early in December.
If it wasn't so violent, there would have been a few unintended laughs in Baaghi 4, but this one has not a shred of humour amidst the nonstop mayhem, observes Deepa Gahlot.
'People ask me about my biggest action sequence; this is it, because it involved two giants of Indian cinema.'
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.
Sri Lanka has asked the Nordic truce monitors not to accede to the rebels' 'unreasonable' demand to remove members in the peace mission who belong to states of European Union, which had outlawed LTTE as a terror organisation.
As Prabhakaran was leaving his house, Rajiv Gandhi called his son Rahul and asked him to fetch his (Gandhi's) bulletproof jacket. He put the jacket on Prabhakaran's back and remarked with his usual charming smile: "Take care of yourself."
As many as five major films released last Friday, and four among these had a south connection.
With a 50 per cent increase in the last four years, Madhya Pradesh has the maximum number (785) of tigers in the country, followed by Karnataka (563), Uttarakhand (560), and Maharashtra (444), according to the data.
Uddhav Thackeray criticized BJP MP Nishikant Dubey for his controversial remarks amid the Marathi-Hindi language row, accusing him of trying to divide people and disturb harmony.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi went on a 'safari' at the Bandipur Tiger Reserve in Karnataka on Sunday, as part of programmes to mark 50 years of 'Project Tiger'.
The Sri Lankan forces fast closing in on LTTE last bastion in island nation's north have captured one of the command bunkers used by elusive Tamil Tiger supreme Velupillai Prabhakaran in thick forests of Dharmapuram town in Mullaittivu.
A United Nations human rights expert has claimed that gruesome footage from the final days of Sri Lanka's civil war is authentic and proves war crimes took place there.
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.
He has single-handedly planted over 100,000 trees and shared more than 40,000 saplings with others -- all at no cost.
