LTTE hands over bodies of SLA to ICRC

[TamilNet, Saturday, 28 April 2001, 11:27 GMT]
"Thirty bodies of SLA soldiers were handed over to the representatives of the International Committee of the Red Cross by the Liberation Tigers in the Vanni region Saturday morning", ICRC spokesman Harasha Gunawardene told TamilNet.
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SLA artillery attack wounds eight in Batticaloa

[TamilNet, Saturday, 28 April 2001, 10:33 GMT]
Eight civilians, including a 3-month-old infant, were seriously wounded Saturday when the Sri Lanka army's 23-3 Brigade in Batticaloa town fired heavy artillery on villages across the lagoon in the district's western hinterland. The SLA opened up with heavy artillery fire on the villages of Mandapathadi and Kannankudah around 10.30 a.m.
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Casualties rise as Jaffna battle rages

[TamilNet, Friday, 27 April 2001, 16:05 GMT]
Heavy fighting continued for the third day in the southern Jaffna peninsula, with both the Liberation Tigers and Sri Lanka Army troops using heavy artillery, official LTTE sources said Thursday. LTTE casualties on Friday night stood at 48 killed, they said. The SLA continued to suffer casualties as troops attempting to dig into a captured salient 1km inside the LTTE's defence lines near Eluthumadduval, the sources further said.
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Vesak should be day of mourning - eastern students

[TamilNet, Friday, 27 April 2001, 12:52 GMT]
Eastern university undergraduates and teachers demonstrated Friday urging the people of Batticaloa to observe the Buddhist Vesak festival as a day of mourning. Thirteen people, including nine children from an orphanage, were shot dead by Sri Lanka army soldiers in Batticaloa town during the Vesak festival on 17 May last year following a blast. The SLA sought an apology for the massacre from the people of Batticaloa in January this year, blaming a drunken commanding officer for ordering troops to open fire on civilians. Meanwhile, the SLA warned civilians in Batticaloa Friday not to move about near its camps and positions in the district after dark. The army increased search operation in the eastern town this week.
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Tigers recover 30 SLA bodies -VOT

[TamilNet, Friday, 27 April 2001, 03:23 GMT]
The Liberation Tigers recovered the bodies of thirty Sri Lanka army soldiers from the battlefield in Jaffna south, the Voice of Tigers said in its morning news broadcast Friday. The radio denied a report by the Special Media Information Centre of the Sri Lankan government that the Sri Lanka Air Force bombed two busloads of its troopers behind the lines on Thursday. The VOT said that heavy fighting was raging in the southern parts of the peninsula for the third day.
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"Fierce fighting continues in southern Jaffna" - LTTE

[TamilNet, Thursday, 26 April 2001, 16:12 GMT]
The Liberation Tigers said in press release issued from their headquarters in the Vanni Thursday evening that fierce fighting continues in southern Jaffna. "More than 300 Sri Lankan army soldiers were killed and over 1200 injured in the ferocious fighting that continues for the second day in the southern sector of the Jaffna peninsula. The Government troops have suffered massive casualties as the combat formations of the Liberation Tigers offered stiff and determined resistance to the offensive assault launched by the Sri Lankan army", the statement said.
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Tigers step up counter fire on SLA

[TamilNet, Thursday, 26 April 2001, 13:21 GMT]
The Liberation Tigers directed heavy mortar and artillery counter barrages on the positions the SLA is trying to consolidate in the Muhamalai-Eluthumadduval sector in Jaffna Thursday. Civilian flights from Jaffna to Colombo operated by a company owned by the Sri Lanka Air Force was cancelled Thursday afternoon, sources in Jaffna said. Passengers who went to board the AN-28 at the Palaly military base this afternoon were turned back. "The SLAF is in urgent need of more flights for casualty evacuation and logistical runs", a member of a Tamil group working with the Sri Lanka army in Jaffna said. The state owned Sri Lanka broadcasting corporation called on civilians Thursday morning to donate blood for the wounded soldiers. Hospital sources in Colombo confirmed that at least 1100 wounded SLA soldiers have been flown out of Jaffna for treatment in civilian hospitals in the southern parts of the island, including the capital.
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ICRC outlines work in war zone

[TamilNet, Wednesday, 25 April 2001, 19:08 GMT]
"The present conflict should come to an end if the displaced living in camps and welfare centers in the Trincomalee district to return to their own villages", Mr. Daniel Shriber, Head of the Delegation of the International Committee of Red Cross in Trincomalee told a press briefing Wednesday. Answering a question he added, "The ICRC is not in a position to provide adequate security for resettled people in Kuchchaveli, Thiriyai villages in the north of Trincomalee district.
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SLA casualties in Jaffna fighting rise

[TamilNet, Wednesday, 25 April 2001, 14:37 GMT]
More than 400 Sri Lanka army soldiers were wounded in less than eight hours of fighting with the Liberation Tigers in Eluthumadduval and Kilali in Jaffna, military sources in the north said. Officials at government hospitals in Anuradhapura and Colombo said preparations are underway to receive more later this evening. The SLA spokesman, however, claimed that only 78 soldiers were wounded and 30 were killed. Op. Agni Khela I (Fire Flame), launched in the early hours of Wednesday morning, was the first phase of an ambitious plan by the SLA to retake JaffnaÌs southern sector and Elephant Pass, the strategic gateway to the peninsula which Tigers overran in April 2000.
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SLA shells Batticaloa villages - residents

[TamilNet, Friday, 20 April 2001, 22:45 GMT]
Sri Lanka Army soldiers stationed at the 23-3 Brigade HQ in Batticaloa fired several rounds of shells towards the villages of Kannankudah, Thaandiyadi, Arasadithivy and Kokkaddicholai in the western hinterlands of the district Friday night residents said.
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Sri Lanka to observe New Year ceasefire

[TamilNet, Tuesday, 10 April 2001, 18:29 GMT]
The Sri Lankan armed forces will cease offensive operations for three days commencing at midnight April 13, to the traditional Tamil and Sinhala New Year, government sources said. The move was not a reciprocation of the Liberation Tigers unilateral ceasefire, now in its fourth month, the sources said.
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Frustrated carnal marauding provokes assault

[TamilNet, Monday, 09 April 2001, 16:51 GMT]
Six civilians who were severely assaulted last night by Sri Lanka army soldiers in the village of Korakallimadu, 25 kilometers north of Batticaloa, complained to International Committee of the Red Cross Monday. One of the complainants said that the soldiers had threatened the villagers with dire consequences if the incident were to be reported to anyone. He said that more than ten persons were assaulted for raising the cry when soldiers from the Kiran Bridge camp had entered their houses and attempted to sexually harass young women late Sunday night.
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Tamil women have no faith in President - MP

[TamilNet, Saturday, 07 April 2001, 11:30 GMT]
"The Tamil women of this country have no faith in the President or the government because there is no justice when wrongs are perpetrated on them by the armed forces. The recent actions of the President are encouraging the army to further indulge in sexual atrocities against Tamil women. Although she is a woman the President does not bother to take even minimal action against the perpetrators of murder and rape. The President applauds the security forces and does what she can to cover up their heinous activities against the Tamil people. Sexual atrocities have been committed on Tamil women in Mannar many times in the past. But only the 19 March incident has come to light", said Mr. Selvam Adaikkalanathan Member of Parliament for the Vanni, speaking Saturday at the protest fast at the St. MaryÌs Church in Mannar town. More than three thousand people from many parts of the Mannar district took part in the fast to protest against the brutal rape and torture of two Tamil women in custody by the Sri Lanka Navy and the Counter Subversive Unit of the Police on 19 March.
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SLA calls off battle for strategic road point

[TamilNet, Thursday, 29 March 2001, 14:30 GMT]
The Sri Lanka army Thursday afternoon called off a major operation to capture a strategic point between Eluthumadduval and Nagar Kovil in Jaffna's southeastern sector amidst heavy resistance from the Liberation Tigers. The SLA launched the operation in the early hours of the morning around 3 a.m. Thursday to capture the Sudalaippiddi Pillaiyar Kovil area on the road linking the Eluthumadduval junction on the A9 and Nagar Kovil.
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Three killed in Batticaloa

[TamilNet, Friday, 23 March 2001, 13:18 GMT]
The Sri Lanka army at Santhively, 24 kilometers north of Batticaloa, Friday handed over to the Eravur hospital the body of a civilian who was shot dead by troops lying in ambush in the interior of Korakallimadu, a hamlet near Kiran Thursday night. The family of Paththakkutti Nallarasa, 49, father of four, told Tamilnet that he was returning home with two friends last night around 8.30 p.m. when an SLA ambush party from the Santhively camp opened fire on them.
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Mutur magistrate sets a precedent

[TamilNet, Saturday, 17 March 2001, 10:23 GMT]
The Mutur Magistrate this week issued certificates that the deaths of seven Tamil farmers in the Poomarathadihchenai massacre in Trincomalee district were due to gunshot and cut injuries. Representatives of the International Committee of Red Cross on Thursday went to Poonagar and handed over the death certificates to the families of the dead, enabling them to claim compensation and relief. Magisterial inquests are not held for Tamils who are killed thus in border villages. As a consequence, hundreds of Tamil families in border villages that have lost their sole breadwinners are denied poverty relief as they cannot produce death certificates for the diseased required by the authorities to accept and process their applications.
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Deserter obduracy gets amnesty extension

[TamilNet, Wednesday, 14 March 2001, 18:48 GMT]
The Sri Lanka army extended until midnight Thursday 15 March a general amnesty for thousands of its deserters who are still at large. An amnesty was announced in January this year and another from 6 March to Wednesday 14 midnight. Frequent amnesties, harsh measures against businesses employing deserters, search operations by Police and exhortations and pleas by leading Buddhist priests have brought few deserters back to the ranks. Military analysts say that 15000 to 20000 deserters are at large at any given time. According to a report in the Colombo press, at least 7000 soldiers deserted their units with weapons. Police point the finger at these for the growing crime rate and the rise of well-armed underworld gangs in many parts of the island, mainly in the capital Colombo.
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No funds for analysis says CID

[TamilNet, Tuesday, 13 March 2001, 19:46 GMT]
(Correction) The Criminal Investigation Department of the Sri Lankan Police told the magistrate hearing the Chemmani case Tuesday in Colombo that the DNA and forensic reports on the Chemmani skeletal remains were not available because the Ministry of Defence had not allocated funds for sending the bones for forensic examination abroad. The CID had got quotations for the forensic examination of the skeletal remains and the DNA tests of the blood samples taken from the next of kin of the persons who were believed killed and buried in Chemmani.
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Police arrest released Tamil political prisoner

[TamilNet, Monday, 12 March 2001, 18:31 GMT]
The Sri Lanka Police in Valaichenai town, 32 kilometres north of Batticaloa, arrested Monday a youth who had spent more than three years in the Kalutara prison and was released by the Colombo high court six months ago. Relatives said the Police arrested the youth on being told to do so by a Sri Lanka Army informant. “The re-arrest and detention of Tamil political prisoners who have been cleared and released by the courts makes a travesty of the judicial process in Sri Lanka. Nevertheless, the Police and the army do it often for arbitrary reasons, purely on the strength of the powers given them under the Prevention of Terrorism Act and the Emergency Regulations”, a lawyer in Batticaloa told Tamilnet.
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SLA detains three in Jaffna

[TamilNet, Monday, 12 March 2001, 18:21 GMT]
The Sri Lanka army arrested three youth Sunday night in Jaffna town. Nallaiah Navanilavan, 20, Kandasamy Kunaaharan, 27 and Gnanamuttu Anton Amalathaas, 23, were cycling towards the town when they were halted and arrested by soldiers near the Chundikuli checkpoint last night around 7.30 p.m. relatives said. They are being held at the 51-2 brigade headquarters in Jaffna town, according to them.
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