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| Sri Lanka |
| 31 killed in recent Sri Lanka fighting |
| 2008-01-27 |
| Fighting across Sri Lanka’s north has left at least 31 people dead, nearly all of them Tamil Tiger rebels, the island’s military said Saturday. The defence ministry said at least 30 Tamil Tiger rebels and one soldier were killed in the fresh wave of fighting on Friday, although the pro-rebel website Tamilnet.com said three government soldiers and two guerrillas died. The fighting took place in Mannar in the northwest, the website said. Since the start of this month, the Sri Lankan government has said it has killed 666 rebels for the loss of 27 of its soldiers. At least 63 civilians had also been killed, according defence ministry figures. Both sides give wildly varying casualty figures which cannot be independently verified as the government bars journalists from visiting frontline areas and rebel-held territory. The government also pulled out of a Norwegian-brokered ceasefire this month, leading to the departure of Nordic monitoring teams. Meanwhile doctors in Anuradhapura district, 206 kilometres (130 miles) north of the capital Colombo, were expected to conduct autopsies on 16 bodies found in shallow graves on Thursday. The victims had apparently been blindfolded, bound and shot - the latest casualties of an increasingly dirty war in which both sides are accused of murdering civilians. A spokesman at Anuradhapura Hospital said the autopsies were scheduled for Saturday, with officials hoping to identify the victims and the circumstances of their deaths. The victims were wearing civilian clothes and appeared to be aged between 25 and 40, said a senior police officer in the area, who declined to be named. He said additional police and military personnel had been deployed in the area following the incident. Ex-warlord jailed in Britain: Sri Lanka’s government on Saturday declined to comment on the jailing in Britain of a renegade warlord on immigration charges after he was allegedly given a false passport by Colombo. Vinayagamoorthi Muralitharan, also known as Colonel Karuna, was sentenced at Isleworth Crown Court in London on Friday to nine months behind bars. A senior Sri Lankan official said the Colombo government - alleged to have used Karuna as a proxy after he defected from the Tamil Tigers - was awaiting details of the court hearing before making any comment. Karuna had told British immigration authorities that Sri Lanka’s powerful Defence Secretary, Gotabhaya Rajapakse, “arranged everything” for him to come to Britain using a diplomatic passport with a false name, the BBC reported. |
| Posted by:Fred |