SLA death toll hits 120, army pushed back to Malaiyaa'lapuram - LTTE

[TamilNet, Thursday, 11 December 2008, 16:18 GMT]
The Liberation Tigers of Tamileelam (LTTE) officials told TamilNet correspondent in Vanni Thursday that the two-pronged SLA offensive on Ki'inochchi was pushed back Wednesday after heavy fighting in Puthumu'rippu in the west of Ki'linochchi and A'riviyal Nakar in the south. The final death toll of the SLA in both the fronts, according to the LTTE claim, was 120 killed in action and more than 280 wounded. Photographs given by the LTTE officials also indicate that there were some young recruits of the SLA among the dead. Meanwhile, the SLA, which admitted heavy fighting, has put the casualties at 20 SLA and 27 LTTE combatants as killed in the latest fighting.
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90 SLA killed in two fronts of Ki'linochchi - LTTE

[TamilNet, Wednesday, 10 December 2008, 15:12 GMT]
More than 60 SLA soldiers were killed and 12 SLA bodies recovered by the Liberation Tigers of Tamileelam (LTTE) defensive units, 5 km west of Ki'linochchi Wednesday after defeating the SLA formations that attempted to advance from Oottuppu'lam to Puthumu'rippu, Tiger officials said. At the same time, a heavy fighting broke out at A'riviyal Nakar, south of Ki'linochchi, where 29 SLA soldiers were killed in the clashes. The Tigers have seized four AK-LMGs, two PK-LMGs and eleven T-56 assault rifles with ammunitions in the clearing mission at Puthumu'rippu Wednesday afternoon.
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North East to experience heavy rains, strong winds

[TamilNet, Saturday, 06 December 2008, 19:27 GMT]
Low depression above the Indian ocean about 350 km off Trincomalee town would pass through between Trincomalee and Mullaitivu Sunday morning between 8:00 a.m. and 9:00 a.m., warned Meteorological Department, in a press release issued Saturday.
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Senior Tamil Journalist Joe Ariyanayagam passes away in Colombo

[TamilNet, Saturday, 06 December 2008, 15:30 GMT]
“Joseph Gnanapragasam Ariyaratnam, popularly known as Joe, was a senior English journalist in Jaffna peninsula who did an excellent service to the people of the peninsula in conveying their true situation to the international community and his death is a great loss to the Tamil people as well as the media,” North Ceylon Journalist Association (NCJA) said in its tribute message Saturday. Joe Ariyaratnam passed away in a private hospital in Colombo Friday where he was being treated for his illness. Free Media Movement (FMM) is making arrangements to have Joe’s remains flown to his residence in Chu’ndikkuzhi Wednesday.
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SLAF, SLA bombardment targets Ki'linochchi suburbs

[TamilNet, Saturday, 06 December 2008, 01:19 GMT]
Sri Lanka Army (SLA) on Friday launched artillery fire towards Ki'linochchi town, its suburbs, Paranthan and Vaddakkachchi as Sri Lanka Air Force (SLAF) bombers targeted Liberation Tigers of Tamileelam (LTTE) defence lines along the suburbs of Ki'linochchi, according to the sources in Vanni.
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'Thanks for food, but help to win our rights,' Vanni IDPs urge Tamil Nadu

[TamilNet, Friday, 05 December 2008, 02:12 GMT]
Internally Displaced persons in Vanni who were receiving the humanitarian supplies sent by the people of Tamil Nadu, while expressing their gratitude for the timely help, urged the leaders of Tamil Nadu to help them to win their freedom by voicing for the political aspirations of Eezham Tamils. TamilNet correspondent recorded expressions from the IDPs who were gathered at Karaichchi Multi-Purpose Cooperative Society, one of 23 supply centres in Vanni, on Thursday.
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TNA MP urges global community's awareness on Sri Lanka's use of cluster munitions

[TamilNet, Wednesday, 03 December 2008, 11:24 GMT]
Tamil National Alliance (TNA) parliamentarian S. Gajendran, who represents Ki'linochchi district (Jaffna electorate), Wednesday urged the global community to "unreservedly condemn" the Sri Lankan government for deploying cluster munitions against civilians in Vanni in its air strikes and artillery attacks. Appreciating the Norwegian initiative which has led to the landmark treaty on baning the cluster munitions, the TNA parliamentarian said the Sri Lankan forces were deploying cluster munitions against civilians after expelling the international witnesses and blocking foreign journalists from entering Vanni.
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Blow to demining efforts in Sri Lanka: NPA pulls out

[TamilNet, Tuesday, 02 December 2008, 11:01 GMT]
"We have given up," said the General Secretary of the Norwegian Peoples Aid, Petter Eide, on the organisations decision to pull out from Sri Lanka. Stating that the NPA was blackmailed and harassed by the Sri Lankan authorities, he said: "We don't want to be there [in Sri Lanka]. We have decided to pull out because the authorities have made our work impossible," reported NTB, Norway's leading news agency on Monday. The organisation celebrates the success on cluster-bomb-ban-treaty to be signed in Oslo on Wednesday.
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School girl killed in Vaddakkachchi in Vanni

[TamilNet, Monday, 01 December 2008, 11:08 GMT]
A 6-year-old child was killed and a male was injured Monday around 11:45 a.m. when Sri Lanka Army (SLA) fired artillery shells targeted Hudson Road (Ira'naimadu Vaddakkachchi Road), according to initial details from Tamileelam police officials in Vanni. The killed girl was on her way back home from Vaddakkachchi school as the school closed earlier due to artillery barrage.
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Quick IDP action averts carnage from Cluster bombs

[TamilNet, Monday, 01 December 2008, 01:33 GMT]
“Three bombs exploded first time. Second time, when the bomber returned after 5 minutes from the opposite direction, there were 3 more blasts. But, the third time, bombs exploded with a parachute effect, like an auto explosion,”  said the head of the camp of the Internally Displaced Peoples (IDPs) that came under indiscriminate attack by the Sri Lanka Air Force (SLAF) in the early hours of Saturday. Many children fled into the jungle during the five-minute window before the aircraft returned for the second attack. If not for the fast action of Ketheeswaran, the head of the settlement, and Pulendran, an intrepid IDP, in escorting and moving IDPs away from the refugee camp, the cluster bombs would have wrought havoc killing many, according to the refugees who escaped. TamilNet interviewed both Ketheeswaran and Pulendran, and several wounded civilians for this feature.
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Churn in Tamil Nadu reopens spectre of R2P - Prof. David

[TamilNet, Sunday, 30 November 2008, 23:48 GMT]
Contrasting  the relatively slow changing and stable U.S. foreign policy to Pandora’s Box of unpredictable possibilities of India’s foreign policy towards Sri Lanka, Prof David in an op-ed column in Sri Lanka’s weekly Lakbima, asserts that “if  TN [Tamil Nadu] boils over not all the protestations of sovereign rights by the Sinhala state will count for a farthing; it will be R2P in its most rough manifestation.” Even ruling out outright military intervention, Prof David says, the new administration in India may take a tough line including using trade as a weapon, harass the Sri Lankan State, or turn a blind-eye to LTTE military activities.
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SLAF bombs refugee camp in 'secure zone' in Vanni, children among victims

[TamilNet, Saturday, 29 November 2008, 08:59 GMT]
Sri Lanka Air Force (SLAF) Kfir bombers attacked a refugee camp of Internally Displaced People bordering Piramanthanaa'ru and Uzhavaoor (Tharmapuram) in Ki'linochchi district in the early hours of Saturday around 1:35 a.m. Medical authorities at Tharmapuram said three persons were killed. Two, a 5-year-old child and an 80-year-old man, died at the hospital. At least 18 wounded civilians, including 7 children and 7 females, were admitted at the hospital following the indiscriminate bombardment on IDP settlement. Medical authorities described the bombardment as "terrible mid-night aerial attack on refugee camp". SLAF bombs refugee camp in Vanni, children among killed, wounded
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Kungchupparanthan: first debacle of SLA in battle for Ki'linochchi

[TamilNet, Friday, 28 November 2008, 22:55 GMT]
Several decomposed corpses of Sri Lanka Army (SLA) soldiers were still lying within the no-man area between the SLA and Liberation Tigers of Tamileelam (LTTE) frontiers in Kugnchupparanthan no man zone, informed sources revealed on Friday. The SLA soldiers had maneuvered deep into LTTE trap, according to the source, which said it was the first debacle of the SLA in the battle for Ki'linochchi. At least 75 SLA soldiers were confirmed dead so far, the source said adding more than 160 of the soldiers, who managed to reach back to their barracks, had been injured. The LTTE, which earlier said 43 SLA soldiers were killed and 70 wounded, is yet to release further updates.
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Floods kill 6 people in Vanni, thousands displaced

[TamilNet, Friday, 28 November 2008, 17:21 GMT]
At least four people were reportedly killed and two more feared dead in the floods caused by storms coupled with torrential monsoon rain during the past 6 days in Vanni. The sluice gates of Visuvamadu tank were opened as the raising water level posed great danger to the wall of the dam that has been shaken already by the Sri Lanka Air Force (SLAF) attacks. Also the sluice gates of two other tanks, Udaiyaarkadduk-ku'lam and Kalmaduk-ku'lam, were opened. Hundreds of volunteers of Tamils Rehabilitation Organiation (TRO) and the Tamileelam Police personnel were seen evacuating civilians and in arranging immediate accommodation in public places.
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SLAF attacks Paranthan

[TamilNet, Friday, 28 November 2008, 14:46 GMT]
Sri Lanka Air Force (SLAF) Kfir bombers attacked Paranthan, a key junction north of Ki'linochchi on Thursday and Friday, dropping bombs on shops and offices. Latest air attack was reported at 3:30 p.m. Friday. Meanwhile, artillery barrage that targeted Paranthan and Ki'linochchi suburbs continued despite pouring rain and floods during the past five days, according to farmers who fled the low-lying cultivation lands in the region.
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Faultline of Sri Lanka’s conflict now clear - paper

[TamilNet, Thursday, 27 November 2008, 19:50 GMT]
Pointing out that it is as Sinhalese have become more and more confident of winning the war that overt racism against Tamils has become blatant, the Tamil Guardian newspaper this week said “what is qualitatively different between the late nineties and now is the clarity of the ethnic faultline in Sri Lanka.” The paper, published Wednesday, argued “Since independence the island’s core problem has been Sinhala domination and … persecution, of the Tamils. In the global liberal bubble of the nineties, this fundamental truth was subsumed amidst the logics of underdevelopment, resource wars and so on.”
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Thousands of IDPs stranded by floods in Vanni

[TamilNet, Tuesday, 25 November 2008, 18:50 GMT]
Floods are flowing over most of the roads and civilians who had sought refuge in open lands and in temporary huts in low-lying areas were forced to seek shelter in schools, temples, churches and public buildings in Vanni. Patients from Ki’linochchi and Mullaiththeevu district hospitals in need of urgent treatment in Vavniyaa hospital cannot be transported as the trunk roads in Vanni remain submerged in water.
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Missing Tamil youth found shot dead in Vavuniyaa

[TamilNet, Monday, 24 November 2008, 15:49 GMT]
The blind folded body of a youth with hands tied, recovered on the bund of Pa'ndaarikulam in Vavuniyaa Sunday morning with gunshot injuries, was identified as of Kumaraswamy Kugathasan, 22, of Paranthan in Ki'linochchi district. The youth went missing since November 13, according to complaints lodged with the Vavuniyaa police by his relatives.
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Colombo 'commissions' education for structural war on Tamils

[TamilNet, Monday, 24 November 2008, 13:28 GMT]
Beginning from curriculum, school textbooks, teachers, educational administrators and resources to the destruction of the existing educational infrastructure in the guise of war, the structural violence committed by the Sri Lankan state against Tamils has been condemned by the Trincomalee MP, Mr. Thurairetnasingam in a parliamentary debate on Friday. “An ethnicity can be devastated by the destruction of its education, and that’s what this government is bent on doing in the North and East”, said the Tamil National Alliance (TNA) MP, while exposing the short term and long term ‘conspiracies’ of the Colombo government in ruining the education of Tamils.
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43 SLA killed, 8 bodies recovered in Nalloor, Poonakari - LTTE

[TamilNet, Sunday, 23 November 2008, 12:57 GMT]
At least 43 Sri Lanka Army (SLA) soldiers were killed and more than 70 wounded in the latest fighting that broke out at Nalloor on Poonakari - Paranthan road, LTTE officials told TamilNet correspondent in Vanni Sunday evening. The fighting went on amid pouring rain and floods, between 4:00 a.m. and 3:00 p.m. Sunday according to the Tigers. The stiff fighting by the Tigers pushed back the Sri Lankan troops in the Poonakari direction, the LTTE said. Meanwhile, heavy rain has led to floods in several places of Vanni causing hardships to thousands of internally displaced people who have been deprived of shelters by the continuous blockade by the Sri Lankan military.
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