News In Brief

[TamilNet, Thursday, 16 October 1997, 23:59 GMT]
The Central bank's research has been disrupted by the Colombo bomb. Sri Lankan press reports of US troops being in the blast area prove unfounded and the Tigers have hit a police station in Jaffna.

Central bank research disrupted

The research division of the Central Bank went dead following the blast yesterday, hampering the processes related to getting the Sri Lankan government's budget through the Parliament next month.

The division had its offices in the World Trade Centre building which was damaged by yesterday's blast in the parking lot of the Galadari hotel.

Sources said that all the computers in the division where the Sri Lankan Central Bank's vital financial information is stored were completely knocked out by the blast.

They also said that the backup system of the division may take some time to start operating to rectify the damage caused to its World Trade Centre offices.

---

US troops not in hotel

New reports in the local press that the US Green Berets were in the Galadari hotel at the time of the blast are not correct.

It is now known that they had been there briefly six days ago.

The Colombo weekly, the Sunday Times, announced the arrival of a US team last weekend to provide training to the SLA.

---

Tigers hit Kopai police station

The Liberation Tigers attacked the Kopai police station last weekend. The fighting lasted for an hour in the early hours of Saturday night Oct.12.

The LTTE unit which carried out the attack later withdrew. Most policemen in the station had decamped when a forward defence bunker was attacked.

Residents who had heard the firing did not know details about the attack. The matter was completely blacked out by the military administration in the peninsula.

The Sri Lankan government has established twelve police stations in Jaffna mainly with a view to pulling out army units engaged in holding operations there for offensives in the Vanni.