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International aid workers have evacuated Sri Lanka's north, where government forces are pursuing a major offensive against Tamil Tiger rebels. The pull-out, demanded by the island's authorities for security reasons, has prompted fears for the fate of tens of thousands of Tamil civilians displaced by the military onslaught. United Nations figures show up to 200,000 people have been displaced in the past few months. The Sri Lankan government says its soldiers are just over five kilometres from Kilinochchi, the political capital of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE). United Nations spokesman Gordon Weiss has told Radio Australia the UN...

Centuries ago, Arab writer Al Kindi referred to Sarandibi steel. Now comes the evidence that there had been in ancient Sri Lanka a large scale and highly successful metal producing industry which was based on a smelting and furnace design driven by the wind that only died out after the Chola invasion. In the quiet of a museum room in Koggala, visitors are transported to a wind-swept hillside in Sabaragamuwa, circa 9th century AD, where flourished this ancient iron smelting industry... discovery of the bigger wind-powered furnaces, that produced iron on an industrial scale, was, in fact, an earlier chapter...

The Hunt for American al Qaeda The United States is turning up the heat in the hunt for the California boy turned al Qaeda operative, Adam Gadahn, who has been charged with treason and is believed to be hiding in Afghanistan. If caught and convicted, Gadahn could face the death penalty. The State Department along with the Department of Diplomatic Security announced the beginning of a publicity campaign in Afghanistan urging locals to provide any information on Gadahn's whereabouts, with a reward if the information leads to his capture. Radio advertisements with information concerning the $1 million reward have...

COLOMBO, June 6 (Reuters) - Several people were killed and others injured in bus explosion during the morning rush hour in a suburb of the Sri Lankan capital on Friday, police said. "There was an explosion in a bus at Moratuwa, a few people were killed and some injured," said police spokesman Ranjith Gunasekara. (Reporting by Ranga Sirilal; Editing by Valerie Lee)

COLOMBO, May 16 (Reuters) - A loud explosion shook a commercial quarter of the Sri Lankan capital Colombo on Friday, a military spokesman said. "There is an explosion near the Hilton Hotel," said military spokesman Brigadier Udaya Nanayakkara, adding there were no details of any injuries or damage.

At least 24 people have been killed and about 50 wounded by a bombing on a bus in the outskirts of the Sri Lankan capital, Colombo, officials have said. The blast happened during rush hour while the bus stopped to pick up passengers in the city's southern suburb of Piliyandala, they added. A government spokesman blamed the Tamil Tiger rebel group. Violence in Sri Lanka has intensified since January, when the government pulled out of a ceasefire agreement. Earlier, the military said its troops had taken control of a church containing the country's most important Roman Catholic shrine. The shrine...

Afghanistan to Ask NATO for Bigger Army Afghan officials will go to the NATO summit in Romania Thursday with a request: pay to increase our national Army by 40 percent. A bigger Army, Afghan officials argue, will allow the US and other coalition members to scale back in the coming years. This appeal comes amid pleas from the US and Canada for other NATO members to commit more to the Afghanistan mission, which many analysts say has floundered over the past year for lack of resources and a coherent strategy. France is expected to contribute another 1,000 forces and...

Counterterrorism police in Quebec and Ontario effectively shut down a non-profit organization for Canadian Tamils this weekend due to allegations it has been raising money to finance terrorist activities in Sri Lanka. The RCMP was expected to announce details of its unprecedented actions as early as today, but several sources said police had moved in to enforce a Federal Court restraining order against the World Tamil Movement. The WTM's offices in Montreal and Toronto have been under police investigation for six years, and were raided by police in 2006. While no charges have yet resulted, the decision to seek a...

COLOMBO, Sri Lanka (AP) - A suicide bomber attacked the opening ceremony of a marathon outside Sri Lanka's capital Sunday, killing a government minister and 11 other people, authorities said. Dozens were wounded. Officials blamed the bombing, the second this year resulting in the death of a senior government official, on Tamil Tiger rebels. Minister of Highways and Road Development Jeyaraj Fernandopulle was opening the race at Weliweriya town, 12 miles outside Colombo. He died in a hospital of injuries sustained in the blast, said government spokesman Lakshman Hulugalla, blaming Tamil rebels. Eleven others were killed—including former Olympic marathoner K.A....

Petraeus: Al Qaida Trying to 'Come Back In' U.S. military officials said there will be no significant reduction in coalition troops in the Baghdad area as part of an effort to stop the Al Qaida offensive in northern Iraq. They said Al Qaida was trying to reenter Baghdad and reverse its losses in 2007. "Al Qaida is trying to come back in," U.S. military commander Gen. David Petraeus said. "We can feel it and see it, and what we're trying to do is rip out any roots before they can get deeply into the ground." Read More Militants Assert...

Rare cave inscriptions By Gamini Mahadura A cave with rare ancient inscriptions dating back to more than 10000 years has reportedly been discovered at Badungala in the PS division of Yakkalamulla in Galle. Archaeology officials say that the inscriptions date back to the Endera yugaya or the era when animals were domesticated. They say similar cave inscriptions had been so far discovered in Alauwa, Ambilikanda and Mawanella. This is the first time that such a find has been reported from the South.

Animal rights group asks Sri Lankan rebels to leave animals out of conflict after zoo attack COLOMBO, Sri Lanka (AP) - An international animal rights group called on Sri Lanka's separatist Tamil Tigers to "leave animals out" of the armed conflict, two weeks after a grenade attack blamed on rebels at the island's main zoo. People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, or PETA, said in a letter dated Feb. 15 to Velupillai Prabhakaran, the reclusive rebel leader, that "the explosive device that was set off near the zoo's bird enclosures terrified many animals at the zoo." PETA president Ingrid...

Is the U.S. Failing in Afghanistan? It was malice in wonderland at the Senate Foreign Relations Committee on Thursday as Bush Administration envoys insisted things are getting better in Afghanistan, while angry lawmakers from both parties cited facts and figures showing just the opposite. Even the senior Republican on the panel, Senator Richard Lugar, found the Administration's claims wanting. "I'm not sure that we have a plan for Afghanistan," he said. Long seen as the "forgotten war" eclipsed by Iraq in U.S. priorities, Afghanistan is in the Washington spotlight this week with the release of three independent reports concluding...

Calculating the Risks in Pakistan A small group of U.S. military experts and intelligence officials convened in Washington for a classified war game last year, exploring strategies for securing Pakistan's nuclear arsenal if the country's political institutions and military safeguards began to fall apart. The secret exercise — conducted without official sponsorship from any government agency, apparently due to the sensitivity of its subject — was one of several such games the U.S. government has conducted in recent years examining various options and scenarios for Pakistan's nuclear weapons: How many troops might be required for a military intervention in...

Sri Lanka Sank 6 N. Korean Ships Carrying Weapons between this Feb. and Oct. 12/14/2007 Sohn Ji-heun /begin my summary Six N. Korean ships were sunk by Sri Lankan Navy between Feb. 28 and late October of this year. They were shipping weapons for Tamil Tigers, which were designated as a terrorist organization by U.S. State Dept. Both N. Korean crews and Tamil terrorists were aboard the ships. They were all presumed to be killed. Sri Lankan Navy was able to sink them with the help of U.S., which passed on intelligence on the location of (N. Korean) ships in...

A report prepared for U.S. lawmakers says North Korea may have provided arms and training to terrorist organizations in Lebanon and Sri Lanka. The Congressional Research Service report, obtained by the Reuters and Yonhap news agencies Wednesday, casts doubt on what it says is the long-standing U.S. view that North Korea halted such activities in 1987. CRS cited French and South Korean sources alleging North Korea has provided more recent support for Hezbollah militants in Lebanon. The report also mentioned a Japanese newspaper report in September that Pyongyang sold arms to the Tamil Tiger rebels in Sri Lanka. A U.S....

'Rajiv Gandhi ordered army to bump off LTTE chief' Vishal Thapar / CNN-IBN New Delhi: A former Indian Peace Keeping Force Commander has claimed in a book that Rajiv Gandhi had ordered the killing of LTTE chief Prabhakaran at the signing of the Indo-Sri Lanka Peace Accord in 1987, well before the hostilities had broken out in October that year. According to the book, Intervention in Sri Lanka, the instructions for the hatchet job were conveyed by JN Dixit, India's envoy in Sri Lanka at that time. The author, Major General Harkirat Singh, says, “I got a call from the...

Commentary: Is Malaysia going the Sri Lankan way? MANIPAL, India, Dec. 5 M.D. NALAPAT Column: Future Present Like the Pakistan army, which has jihad as its official motto, the rulers of Malaysia claim to represent the "moderate" face of Islam. However, ever since former Prime Minister Mahathir Mohammad introduced Wahabbism Lite into Malaysia in 1981, the practice of discriminating against all other creeds has evolved. Across Malaysia today there is a rolling back of the 2,000-year-old culture of the Malays, brought with the Chola and Srivijaya kings from India. In place of this tolerant and syncretic tradition -- which is...

Sri Lanka has promised to look into allegations that 108 of its UN peacekeepers in Haiti paid for sex, in some cases with underage girls. The men are being sent home after being accused of sexual misconduct and abuse. Officials say the law will take its course once the soldiers arrive back in Sri Lanka, but warn that little tangible evidence has been produced. In the past, UN peacekeepers have been involved in a series of sex scandals, including this year in Ivory Coast. 'Zero tolerance' Sri Lanka has sent four senior officers, including a female brigadier, to Haiti to...

Passengers revolt after being told to fly on jet with its wing tip missingBy DANIEL BOFFEY - More by this author » Last updated at 21:43pm on 3rd November 2007  An airline crew faced a rebellion when they told passengers they were going to fly on a jet that had lost its wing tip in a runway crash.  The SriLankan Airlines customers had been on the Airbus A340 a day earlier when it sliced through a wing of a stationary British Airways 747 at Heathrow, delaying departure by 24 hours. So they were amazed to be boarding the same...

Sri Lankan fighter jets bombed a secret rebel communications center early yesterday, killing the Tamil Tigers' political chief and five others in a strike expected to deal a sharp blow to the guerrillas' morale. The killing of S.P. Tamilselvan, who acted as the public face of the rebels, was widely seen as a public relations coup for the government. But analysts feared it would further escalate the more than two-decade-old civil war and spark a cycle of political assassinations across this Indian Ocean island nation. "This is a message that we know their leaders' location," Defense Secretary Gotabhaya Rajapaksa said....

A band of men linked to Tamil Tiger terrorists - led by a Sri Lankan who used a fake passport to get security clearance at Newark Airport - has been busted in a massive plot to loot city ATMs. Manhattan prosecutors told the Daily News the eight men had ties to the terror group and were part of a scheme to use stolen credit card numbers to steal $250,000 in New York - and tens of millions from ATMs worldwide. Six were nabbed in January in a raid at the Chelsea Inn, a reputed lair for the ultraviolent Sri Lankan...

COLOMBO, Sri Lanka, September 7 (UNHCR) – More than 3,000 people have fled their homes in north-west Sri Lanka's disputed Mannar district to escape fresh fighting between government troops and the rebel Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) over the past week. The Ministry of Resettlement and Disaster Relief Services, citing local government officials in Mannar, said 3,109 people had moved from southern parts of Mannar to Nanattan division in the north of the district. Slightly more than half were staying with friends or family. The rest – 435 families – are being accommodated in two schools and a damaged...

The Sri Lankan military say they have taken what they are calling the last Tamil Tiger rebel stronghold in the east of the country. A spokesman said troops had re-taken the rugged area of Thoppigala in the district of Batticaloa, which has been in rebel hands for years. The Tamil Tigers still control large swathes of the island's north. Speaking to the BBC in their stronghold at Killinochchi, the rebels admitted the army was now dominant in the east... Correspondents say that the fall of Thoppigala gives the government control over the entire eastern province for the first time...

World Monuments Fund favours garnering public support on this ancient bridge Government can make it a tourist attraction, say experts World Monuments Fund, an international preservation organisation that brings out World Monuments Watch List of endangered sites, has said that the Government of India should be made to realise that it's more valuable to preserve Ram Setu or Adam's Bridge than demolishing it. Marilyn Perry, chairman of the fund, said in an interview on the sidelines of the function to release the list of endangered sites of the world in its New York Madison Avenue office that the Federal Government...

COLOMBO, Sri Lanka- Two Sri Lankan Red Cross workers abducted from the capital two days ago were found shot to death, the aid group said Sunday. The bodies of the two ethnic Tamil men were found Saturday in Ratnapura district, about 60 miles southeast of the capital, Colombo, Red Cross Director General Neville Nanayakkara said. Nanayakkara said the two men, S. Shanmugalingam and K. Chandramohan, had been in the capital for a workshop and were at a train station on their way home when they were taken away by men who claimed to be police. He said the two were...

The city was thrown into a state of panic.

Men face terrorism charges after raids The Australian Federal Police (AFP) have arrested two men in Melbourne in connection with alleged terrorism. The AFP, along with Victoria Police, staged raids on eight locations in Melbourne and two in Sydney this morning. In Melbourne, a 32-year-old Mount Waverley man has been charged with three offences related to being a member of a terrorist organisation, and knowingly making funds available to an terrorist organisation. A 36-year-old man from Vermont South is expected to charged later this afternoon. AFP Assistant Commissioner, Frank Prendergast, says the activities are allegedly connected to the Sri Lankan...

Tigers exploit flaws in Lankan air defence PK Balachandran, Hindustan Times Colombo, April 30, 2007 They are like David and Goliath. The Sri Lankan Air Force (SLAF) has a fair sized fleet of Kfir, MIG 27 and Y-8 bombers, MI-17 and MI-24 choppers, and AN-32 transport aircraft. In contrast, the LTTE's air arm, christened Tamileelam Air Force (TUF), is a puny, single digit fleet of propeller-driven and locally assembled Zlin Z-142s of Czech design. And yet, the fledgling Flying Tigers have been able to infiltrate hundreds of kilometres of government-held territory, attack key military and strategic targets, and get back...

Fr. Maximilian N. Ranatunga tells AsiaNews the story of his conversion from Buddhism: from his initial condemnation of Christianity, through the newfound “wonder” of praying to the Virgin, to his search for God and the priestly vocation to “place himself at the service of the sick”. Rome (AsiaNews) – He was to have become a Buddhist monk, but today he is Sri Lanka’s first Camillian priest.  Father Maximilian N. Ranatunga, 45 years old, synthesizes his life: “ I was no stranger to sufferance, but then at a certain point, without my knowing why or how I found the joy and...

RCMP raids Toronto Tamil offices Tigers outlawed as a terrorist group Toronto Star Surya Bhattacharya and Michelle Shephard April 23, 2006 Royal Canadian Mounted Police officers raided the Scarborough and Toronto offices of the World Tamil Movement yesterday, sealing off the building with yellow police tape and carting off boxes of documents. Police hit offices at 39 Consentino Dr. in Scarborough, and later yesterday the community Tamil radio station reported a similar raid on the Toronto office on Eaton Ave., near Wellesley and Parliament Sts. in downtown Toronto. The World Tamil Movement maintains a third office here at 1231 Ellesmere...

Excerpt - NEW YORK (Reuters) - The suspected head of the U.S. branch of Sri Lankan rebel group the Tamil Tigers was arrested in New York on Wednesday and charged with providing material support to a foreign terrorist organization. Karunakaran Kandasamy could face up to 15 years in prison if convicted, prosecutors at the federal court in the New York borough of Brooklyn said. As the director of the U.S. branch of the Tamil Tigers, which is based in Queens, New York, Kandasamy oversaw the organization's activities, including its fund-raising, prosecutors said. The rebels, known officially as the Liberation Tigers...

Sri Lanka's Tamil Tigers have bombed a military base near the international airport north of Colombo, in the rebels' first ever aerial attack. Three people were killed and 16 injured when light aircraft dropped two bombs, officials said, hitting a parking area for planes and helicopter gunships. The international airport - which was not damaged - was closed briefly. Tiger rebels attacked the airport and base in 2001, killing 18 and wiping out half of the national airline fleet. A statement from the Tamil Tiger rebel group, carried by TamilNet, claimed responsibility for the attack on the Katunayake base, which...

West Indies v Pakistan, Group D, Jamaica Smith and Bravo come to the fore The Bulletin by Will Luke March 13, 2007 West Indies 241 for 9 (Samuels 63, Sarwan 49) beat Pakistan 187 (Malik 62, Smith 3-36, Bravo 3-42) by 54 runs The West Indies shrugged off any early-tournament nerves with a convincing 54-run win over Pakistan in the opening match of the World Cup at Kingston in Jamaica, with a notable allround performance from Dwayne Smith. It was an impressive win, not least for their ability to absorb the expectation of hosting their first World Cup. Furthermore, the...

The rally is intended to unify the region (Picture by Focusbangla) One of Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh's dreams came true when a South Asian car rally flagged off on Thursday from the south-east of Bangladesh.The rally - which organisers say is the first of its kind in the region - began from the resort town of Cox's Bazar. About 100 participants, including celebrities, sportsmen, government officials and journalists, packed 26 jeeps for the nearly 8,000km rally. They will travel through Nepal, Pakistan, Sri Lanka and the Maldives. 'Expand goodwill' The rally, which finishes in April, will take drivers...

Government on Tuesday said there are no archaeological studies that reveal the existence of a Ram Sethu bridge between India and Sri Lanka. However, a NASA satellite picture has shown the existence of a stretch of land bridge in the Palk Strait between the countries, Minister of Tourism and Culture Ambika Soni said in a written reply to the Rajya Sabha today. She informed the house that as there are no archaeological studies to confirm the fact, the government was not planning to take any preservation initiative in this direction.

THE US and Italian ambassadors to Sri Lanka were wounded today in an artillery attack by suspected Tamil Tiger rebels in eastern Sri Lanka. US ambassador Robert Blake and Italian envoy Prio Mariani were hit by shrapnel from the attack at the Batticaloa airforce base as they got off a military helicopter, Human Rights Minister Mahinda Samarasinghe said. Mr Samarasinghe had been with the pair when the attack happened. Mr Mariani had a head injury and was taken to the main local hospital together with 11 others, hospital director Muruganathan Moorthy told AFP.

Sri Lanka: ambassadors Italian and US wounded in a rebellious offensive COLOMBO - The ambassadors American and Italian in Sri Lanka were wounded Tuesday in an offensive with artillery carried out by rebels tamouls supposed in the east of the island, indicated to AFP the minister human rights Mahinda Samarasinghe. The ambassador Robert Blake and his Italian counterpart Prio Mariani were touched by glares of shells which struck the landing strip of the air base of Batticaloa at the time when the diplomats left a military helicopter, specified the Samarasinghe minister. Mr. Mariani was touched with the head, without...

Chennai, 25 Jan. (AKI/Asian Age) - Police in the Indian state of Tamil Nadu say they have busted a major army supply line for the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE), arresting five suspected Tiger militants and seizing 5,000 kilos of steel ball bearings being readied for smuggling across the sea to northern Sri Lanka for use in explosives. Four Indian Tamils, including one belonging to a fringe Tamil nationalist group in Tuticorin, were also arrested for links with the LTTE arms procurement operation, the police said. "It appears that we have busted a major supply line for the manufacture...

The international community should make further assistance to Sri Lanka dependent on the resumption of the peace process in the country, German Development Minister Heidemarie Wieczorek-Zeul said in an interview to be published Sunday... to mark the second anniversary of the devastating Tsunami which swept across coastal regions surrounding the Indian Ocean on December 26, 2004. Sri Lanka was one of hardest hit by the catastrophe, which resulted in more than 230,000 deaths across Asia... She said that as result of the renewed civil war and the flare up in fighting in Tamil populated areas, no new funds could be...

A federal judge has ruled that a portion of a post-Sept. 11 executive order allowing President Bush to create a list of specially designated global terrorist groups is unconstitutionally vague. U.S. District Judge Audrey Collins, in a Nov. 21 ruling released Tuesday, struck down the provision and enjoined the government from blocking the assets of two foreign groups which were placed on the list. The ruling was praised by David Cole, a lawyer for the Washington, D.C.-based Center for Constitutional Rights. "This law gave the president unfettered authority to create blacklists," he said. "It was reminiscent of the McCarthy era."...

Tamil Tiger rebels have carried out a suicide attack on a naval base in the southern Sri Lankan tourist city of Galle. Eyewitnesses to the attack and the chaotic aftermath describe what they saw. RAMILA WALGAMAGE, REAL ESTATE BROKER At least two rebel boats exploded in the harbour When we heard the first blast, we didn't know what it was. We immediately ran to get a view of the harbour. We saw a few boats come into the harbour and explode. The boats we saw were high-speed boats and their explosions were sudden, unexpected and terrifying. There was a massive...

Sri Lanka suffered its worst suicide attack when Tiger rebels blew up an explosives-laden truck next to a convoy of sailors, killing at least 103 people and wounding 150 more, police have said. The government said the "barbaric" act, which coincided with heightened international efforts to restore a 2002 truce, meant the Tamil Tiger guerrillas were not interested in talks scheduled to take place next week in Switzerland.

ALARM - Sri Lanka: "vast offensive" of the army COLOMBO - the Sri Lankian army launched Wednesday a "vast offensive" against the rebellion tamoule in the septentrional peninsula of Jaffna, announced the guerrilla.

COLOMBO, Sri Lanka (AP) - Hundreds of Muslim families are fleeing their homes in eastern Sri Lanka amid fears of a Tamil Tiger rebel assault to reclaim territory taken by government forces in recent fighting, a local government leader said Saturday. The chairman of the government in the coastal town of Mutur, who goes by the single name Thoufeek, said 700 to 800 families - about 10 percent of the population - left on Friday and Saturday after the Tamil Tiger separatists warned that they were planning an offensive. Many of Mutur's residents, who are mostly Muslims, only returned to...

Colombo (dpa) - Eleven Muslim civilians were hacked to death with swords in eastern Sri Lanka, military officials said Monday, adding that they suspected Tamil rebels were behind the attack. However, the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) denied it was responsible and blamed government troops for the massacre. The military has a long tradition of blaming the separatist rebels for its own atrocities, the LTTE charged. The victims were employed to repair a dam in an irrigation canal in Panama, Potuvil, 340 kilometres east of Colombo, when they were abducted, military officials said. The men had gone missing on...

WASHINGTON - The United States on Friday classified six Asian countries as religious freedom violators, aside from China, Myanmar, North Korea and Vietnam already blacklisted as worst offenders in the region. Afghanistan, Brunei, India, Laos, Pakistan and Sri Lanka were included in a ‘significant’ list of violators of religious freedom in the US State Department’s annual International Religious Freedom Report 2006. John Hanford, US envoy for international religious freedom, said there was a possibility that one or more from the six nations could be added to a blacklist of ‘countries of particular concern’ that includes China, Myanmar, North Korea and...

COLOMBO, Sri Lanka (CNN) -- The Sri Lankan army said 28 soldiers were killed and 119 were wounded while battling the Tamil Tiger rebels in Jaffna, located in the northern tip of the country, late Saturday evening, Sri Lanka police inspector Percy Perera said. An estimated 150 Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) rebels were also killed, with more wounded, Perera said. The exact number of wounded was not immediately available, he said.

'100 Tigers killed' in sea battle with Sri Lankan navy By Michael Hirst (Filed: 03/09/2006) Sri lanka's navy claimed to have sunk 12 Tamil Tiger boats during a six-hour sea battle yesterday that killed up to 100 rebels. The fighting started late on Friday when about 20 Tiger vessels, including five suicide boats packed with explosives, attempted to attack a naval base at Kankasanthurai, a key port on the northern Jaffna peninsula. A patrol, including fast-attack gun boats, drove the Tigers into open water where the battle continued until dawn yesterday. TamilNet, a pro-rebel website, claimed that two navy vessels...

The Sri Lankan military has launched a new offensive aimed at forcing Tamil Tiger rebels from areas close to the eastern port of Trincomalee. Casualties are unclear. The rebels said at least 20 civilians were killed and 26 hurt in air raids. Four soldiers had died and 40 were hurt, the army said.