At least 38 Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam cadres, including a woman, and two soldiers were killed in fierce clashes in Sri Lanka's restive north amidst attack by the air force fighter aircrafts to support the ground forces.
Ruling out talks with the LTTE till the outlawed outfit agreed to disarm, Sri Lankan President Mahinda Rajapakse has accused Britain of double standards in dealing with the global menace of terrorism.
A Pakistani probe team has arrived in Sri Lanka to investigate whether there were any local links, including the possibility of the role of Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam, on the attack on the Lankan cricket team in Lahore in March.
In an apparent move to placate Sri Lanka's anger over Hillary Clinton's remarks that "rape" was used as a weapon in the war against the LTTE, the US has said it had no recent evidence of women being sexually assaulted while in custody in the country.
Balasegaram Kandiah alias Brigadier Balraj died on Tuesday at the age of 42. An expert on different forms of warfare, Balraj is reported to have deployed varied tactics while planning and conducting operations for the LTTE.
The incident took place near Sambuddhaloka Viharaya at the fort area, the defence ministry said. Officials said 10 police personnel were killed when the motorbike-ridden suicide bomber from the LTTE hit the bus.
Sri Lanka on Monday accused human rights watchdog Amnesty International of joining hands with Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam sympathizers, as the death toll from fierce weekend clashes rose to 95 in the embattled north. The Sri Lankan Defence Ministry said that the London-based Amnesty had organised a demonstration in front of the Permanent Mission of Sri Lanka to the United Nations in New York on Friday.
The bus toppled and was dragged about 25 metre before it came to a halt after being hit by the powerful blast.
A woman suicide bomber blew herself up inside the Colombo Fort railway station in the heart of Colombo, hours after a grenade explosion inside the Dehiwala Zoo near Colombo left seven people including two children injured.
Sri Lankan fighter jets pounded a 'field headquarters' of the LTTE and destroyed at least 35 rebel bunkers as security forces gunned down 64 rebels and lost three of their soldiers.
The summit will be held in the picturesque city of Kandy, with Colombo planning 'foolproof' security arrangements to ward off any attack from the LTTE as it battles the rebel forces in the north.
"The LTTE is, perhaps, fighting its last battle and the security forces are continuing their fight to emancipate the country and the people of the north and east from terrorism," Rajapakse said after giving away gallantry awards to the armed forces personnel in Colombo on Thursday.
Air Force spokesperson Wing Commander Andi Wijesoriya said the target has been a regular visiting place of Prabhakaran. Fighter pilots have confirmed that the target was accurately hit, he added.
The Lankans have said in their statements that they have no links with LTTE and left Jaffna as they were upset with the continued violence in the region, adding that they wanted to live a peaceful life.
The LTTE has 'quite a resume' as a terrorist group, which is credited with perfecting the use of suicide bombers, inventing suicide belts and pioneering the use of women in suicide attacks, the top investigating agency said.
The United Nations believes that the civilian death toll in the final war between the Sri Lankan army and the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam might have been exaggerated in the media reports and were 'not necessarily correct'. But the UN "does not think that the figure quoted in the press is necessarily correct," highly-placed sources said, adding that though the media had quoted UN as the source for the shocking figure, the UN had no idea where the figure had come from.
The news of Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam chief V Prabhakaran's death has created ripples across the world, but it makes no difference to Muniyamma, the milk vendor who tipped off the Bangalore police about Rajiv Gandhi's assassins in 1991.What really matters to Muniyamma, 55, is that she is yet to receive the Rs 10 lakh promised to her by the police, for tipping them off about the whereabouts of LTTE operatives Shivarasan and Shubha.
The announcement of the death of Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam leader V Prabhakaran by the Sri Lankan army has not created any flutter in the Lankan refugee camps in Rameswaram and Madurai, but most inmates dismissed the reports as false. "Prabhakaran is not dead. He will emerge stronger... nobody can touch even his shadow," Andrews, a refugee at Mandapam camp, said. "Prabhakaran has been fighting for us for more than 30 years, we know his strength," said another refugee.
Prabhakaran strode in, wearing his trademark safari suit. Well built, very sure of himself. He put his hands on the table and looked around the hall scanning the entire area slowly. There was pin drop silence. We had been told not to get up but those on stage had risen.
Tamil Tiger supremo Velupillai Prabhakaran is dead, the Sri Lankan army stated on Monday.Earlier in the day, the SL army, which had closed in on the last foothold of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam, killed several top rebel leaders.The body of Charles Anthony, Prabhakaran' son, was found during mop-up operations in the last rebel-held territory in the no-fire zone on Monday morning.
Is the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam chief Prabhakaran dead? If the Sri Lankan Army is to be believed, Prabhakaran's body was found dead. There are also reports that a huge explosion was heard outside where the LTTE chief was reportedly hiding.
'Although the nature of the injuries is minor, he had been treated in an underground facility in a secret location in the Wanni by the LTTE's Thileepan Medical Unit, the official emergency care unit of the LTTE,' the Nation newspaper reported quoting sources.
Ahead of talks between the Sri Lankan government and the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam, India Friday pitched for consensus among the island nation's main political parties to salvage the fragile truce.
On the verge of annihilation, the Liberation Tigers of the Tamil Eelam announced an unilateral ceasefire on Sunday, saying that that the humanitarian crisis in Sri Lanka's war zone can only be overcome by a truce, but the Lankan government quickly rejected the offer and instead asked the rebels to surrender.
Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam supremo Velupillai Prabhakaran and his top aides were recently missed by a whisker by the security forces, a top Sri Lankan commander said, claiming that the rebel leader had limited options right now."We got to know that Prabhakaran had moved through the Pudukudiryirippu-Iranmalai road on a day between March 29 and 31, just about two days before the army fully laid seige to that area," GoC 58 Division Brigadier Shavendra Silva said.
On the verge of total defeat, the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam on Thursday said that nearly 165,000 civilians in the areas controlled by it were close to starvation and accused Sri Lankan authorities of blocking food and humanitarian supplies to the area. Comparing the humanitarian crisis in the 10 sq km swath of coastal land in Pudukudiyyiruppu to the Dafur crisis in Sudan, the LTTE in a statement asked the United Nations and other international aid groups to intervene.
The United Nations on Friday said that more than 50,000 civilians were still trapped in Sri Lanka's war zone and renewed its call to Colombo to allow an assessment mission into the area to facilitate relief operations and evacuation procedures. The Sri Lankan government had said that an estimated 15,000 people still remained in the war zone.
As suspense grows about the whereabouts of Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam supremo Velupillai Prabhakaran after the capture of the last bastion of the outfit, the Sri Lankan army chief on Monday said he believed the guerrilla leader could be in an underground bunker or in the no-fire zone.It is widely believed that both Prabhakaran and his son Charles Anthony could be in the 20 sq km no-fire zone, where the rebel remnants are said to be holed up after they were pushed out.
The US asked the Sri Lankan government to "take advantage" of the opportunity and accept an offer of a UN team that is probing alleged human rights abuses in the final months of the war with the Liberation Tigers of the Tamil Eelam. The UN on Tuesday announced that Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon had set up a three-member panel to look into alleged human rights violations during the final stages of the war against the LTTE in Sri Lanka.
"Sri Lanka in its battle against terrorism has set examples and its successes has given other democracies hope that terrorism can be fought and overcome," Foreign Minister Rohitha Bogollagama said.
Marumalarchi Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam leader Vaiko on Monday, dubbed the photographs released by the Sri Lankan army which shows him with Liberation Tigers of the Tamil Eelam chief V Prabhakaran as old ones and said there is an "ulterior motive" behind it.
The delegation said it was suspending its role until the president and prime minister resolved their differences.
Kumaran Padmanathan, who allegedly financed former Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi's assassination, was reported to have been detained in Thailand earlier this week.
President Chandrika Kumaratunga has said the truce her prime minister signed with Tamil rebels is illegal, reports the BBC
Navy Chief Admiral Wasantha Karannagoda said he believed the LTTE were bringing three light aircraft, artillery and a bullet-proof vehicle in the ships sunk some 600 km off the island's south-eastern coast.
The dreaded Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam may have been wiped off from Sri Lanka, but its lessons to Naxals are showing in the form of attacks carried out by improvised explosive devices with precision in the hinterlands of Chhattisgarh. The Left-wing extremists used the technique to blow-up a civilian bus on Monday in which at least 50 people were feared killed, officials said. The Maoists staged the attack by digging a tunnel on either side of the road.
The ongoing war between the Sri Lankan government and the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam cannot be a solution to the ethnic conflict in the island nation and only a negotiated settlement will bring lasting peace in the nation, former Sri Lankan president Chandrika Kumaratunga said in New Delhi on Tuesday.
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