Security expert B Raman takes a look at the situation in Lanka, where the LTTE is on its knees.
At least 64 people were killed in fierce ground clashes and shelling of a key military base close to a Catholic church by Ta mil Tigers in Sri Lanka's embattled northern region, officials have said.
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.
'We urge you to consider recognising Tamil sovereignty as a constructive approach to end the five decades long, large-scale, and serious rights violations against the Tamil people,' the LTTE political head B Nadesan said in a letter to the UN Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon on Wednesday.
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.
At least 63 LTTE militants and three security forces personnel were killed in raging ground battles since weekend while Tamil Tiger rebels on Monday shelled a main Sri Lankan military air base linking the country to the embattled north.
Even if the police step up their vigil against these illegal immigrants, these Sri Lankan youths will find a way to sneak into the country, as they live under desperate conditions.
"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.
Sri Lanka on Monday insisted that India is not involved in the recent attack on its cricket team in Lahore, but did not rule out the possibility of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam link to the audacious gun and grenade strike that left seven players injured and eight people dead.
Forty-four Tamil Tigers and two soldiers were killed in fierce clashes between the rebels and security forces in the embattled northern Sri Lanka, where fighting has intensified since the government pulled out of a six-year-old ceasefire pact with the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam this month.
Liberal member of the Canadian Parliament Gurbax Malhi addressed a rally in Ottawa on March 5 against the backdrop of Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam flags."I'd like to let you know I'm helping you guys. I'm behind you because you are fighting for a right cause," he said.
The ICRC had pulled out last week following a stepping up of shelling by government forces and Tamil Tiger rebels.
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.
India's security authorities have urged the (Indian) government to revamp coastal security mechanisms in the wake of the escalation of fighting between Security Forces and the LTTE, state-owned Daily News reported.
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.
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.
Two Tigers were killed in a ground attack on Monday evening in the Vavuniya region where two soldiers were also wounded.
The Tamil Tigers said on Monday that they were ready for a ceasefire with the Sri Lankan government, but refused to lay down their arms. With the Liberation Tigers of the Tamil Eelam cornered in a fast shrinking small landmass in the north easter coast of the country, the rebels appeal for a truce came in a letter to the United Nations and other foreign powers.
The posters invite people to a show on Thai-Pongal day in January sponsored by an organisation allegedly close to the Tamil Tigers, Sri Lanka's government-owned Daily News said.
In two letters purportedly written in Tamil by a suicide bomber Colonel Rooben, one of the Black Air Tigers, who the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam claims that flew the LTTE aircraft that hit the headquarter of Sri Lankan Air Force and its base near Colombo on Friday, has urged the Tamils of Tamil Nadu and of the Vanni area of Sri Lanka to join the outfit's military battle against the Lankan government.
Abdul Samad Mohamed Raik was convicted for cloning more than 500 credit cards to steal 175,000 in a fraud allegedly driven by links to a Sri Lankan guerilla group.
Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam supremo V Prabhakaran will find it difficult to survive beyond six months, Sri Lankan army chief Sarath Fonseka has warned, vowing to eliminate the 3,000-strong Tiger rebels from their stronghold of Wanni in the embattled north. "The three armed forces are confident of wiping out the LTTE, which is now smarting its wounds due to the present military operations," Fonseka, who survived an assassination attempt by LTTE in April 2006, said.
India has mended its stand on Sri Lanka, no longer insisting that the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam, should lay down arms as a pre-condition for talks with the government in Colombo for a political settlement. Instead of asking the LTTE to lay down the arms, India now wants it to at least agree in principle to lay down the arms as that can pave the way for negotiations with the Sri Lankan government.
In a statement issued to coincide with Karunanidhi's visit to New Delhi to take part in the Chief Ministers' Conference on Internal Security on December 20, she said following a tip-off from central agencies, one Vanniyarasu, belonging to ruling DMK's ally Viduthalai Chiruthaigal, was arrested by police.
With the Sri Lankan forces poised to capture the remaining strongholds of the Lankan Tigers of Tamil Eelam, India on Thursday told Colombo to ensure the safety of the Tamil civilians who are caught in the war zone in the north of the island. External Affairs Minister Pranab Mukherjee also asked the LTTE to allow civilians in the areas held by it to cross over to the safe zones of the Sri Lankan government
Over 26 Tamil Tiger rebels and one soldier were killed in fresh clashes between government troops and the guerrillas in the restive northern Sri Lanka, the military said on Monday.
'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.
Eighty-two Tamil Tigers were killed by security forces in Sri Lanka's north, including 51 who died in an army raid on a key Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam base, as fighter jets pounded another area in the embattled region targeting a rebel gathering, officials said on Thursday. The rebel toll in Wednesday's attack on the LTTE-held Vidattaltivu town in Mannar, which was captured by security forces, reached 51, according to the military.
Heavy gun battles on Wednesday left at least 17 Tamil Tigers dead, while rebels claimed they killed over two dozen soldiers in Sri Lanka's embattled north.
On January 27, B Muralidhar Reddy, a distinguished journalist with The Hindu was taken to the war zone of Mullaithivu, along with other Sri Lankan journalists by the Sri Lankan defence ministry.
A suspected Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam suicide bomber blew himself up when troops surrounded him in Sri Lanka's northern Jaffna peninsula, where two Tamil Tiger rebels and a soldier were killed in separate incidents, the army said in Colombo on Monday.
A senior Congress leader in Tamil Nadu on Friday alleged that Liberation Ttigers of Tamil Eelam supremo Velupillai Prabhakaran could be responsible for the recent killing of the outfit's political wing leader S P Tamilselvan in a Sri Lankan Air Force raid.
As Sri Lankan troops advance towards the last Tiger bastion of Mullaittivu, Army Chief Sarath Fonseka has said he was not sure whether Velupillai Prabhakaran was on the island nation but felt that it was not possible for the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam supremo to find a shelter in India. The Lankan Air Force had destroyed a vessel carrying arms and ammunitions for the LTTE just when it was being offloaded in the rebel coastal area, Fonseka added.
Vice-Admiral Damle said the LTTE, which was facing an 'almost impenetrable situation' on the Tamil Nadu coast, was now beginning to shift its drug trafficking, arms running and other activities to the Kerala coast, especially in the Thiruvananthapuram-Kochi stretch.
Sri Lanka has offered to hold talks with the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam after a two-year gap, saying the outfit does represent a fair amount of Tamils but ruled out the immediate revival of the ceasefire scrapped in January.
About 300 protestors from parties like MDMK, Indian National League and Tamil National Movement courted arrest along with the two leaders near the Munroe statue in Chennai while trying to go ahead with the rally.
The troops, backed by fighter jets, had on Thursday stormed two key rebel bastions near Killinocchi in the island's north after killing 50 guerrillas and injuring 100. The security forces took control of the rebels' Iranamadu Junction on Thursday morning, shortly after capturing the LTTE's strategic Paranthan town.
The move follows the EU's decision to ban the LTTE as a terrorist organisation last month.
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