Hindu priest gunned down in east Sri Lanka , military blames Tamil rebels

Associated Press, Thu February 8, 2007 01:51 EST . DILIP GANGULY - Associated Press Writer - COLOMBO, Sri Lanka - (AP) Gunmen shot dead an ethnic Tamil Hindu priest who had publicly welcomed Sri Lanka's president to a strife-torn eastern village after the military drove out Tamil Tiger insurgents, the Defense Ministry said Thursday. The government says it is willing to give limited autonomy to areas where Tamils live, but the rebels want to secede from Sri Lanka.
The military has managed to push the rebels out of their bases in some parts of east.

Sri Lanka attacks rebel training base in the north

COLOMBO, Feb 8, 2007 (Xinhua via COMTEX) - Sri Lanka Air Force on Thursday carried out air raids against Tamil Tiger rebel training facilities in the north, defense officials said.

Brigadier Prasad Samarasinghe, the military spokesman, said that Air Force helicopters had dropped bombs around 10:00 a.m. local time (0430 GMT) at the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam ( LTTE) sea wing training base in Mullaitivu, an area under Tiger control.

Samarasinghe said that the Air Force on Wednesday had similarly air raided LTTE facilities in the eastern port district of Trincomalee.

"We had heard that LTTE rebels were increasing their fighting cadre recruitment in the area," Samarasinghe said.

Officials said that a vessel carrying civilians from the northern Jaffna peninsula had arrived in the port of Trincomalee Thursday morning.

The government says the rebel threat is fast diminishing in the Eastern Province with the government's military successes.

In early September last year, the troops took control of Sampur, a key rebel stronghold south of the Trincomalee harbor.

On January 19, the troops annexed Vakarai, another key rebel center in the east.

President Mahinda Rajapakse last week visited both areas and vowed to restore civil administration soon for the first time in over a decade.

Some 40,000 civilians were estimated to have been displaced from Vakarai and the government claimed that they would be re- settled upon action to restore the infrastructure.

Nearly 68,000 have been killed in the island country's ethnic conflict since the mid-1980s.

Over 150 killed in a month's violence in Sri Lanka

Over 150 people were killed in violence over the last one month's period in Sri Lanka's restive north and east zones, Prime Minister Ratnasiri Wickramanayake told parliament on Wednesday

Speaking in the monthly parliamentary debate to extend the state of emergency by a further month, Wickramanayake said that some 53 troops and 101 civilians were killed in the escalation of violence.

Some 200 civilians and 181 troops were injured in the clashes, the prime minister added.

He said the state of emergency which gives sweeping powers to government troops to crackdown on terror acts of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) needs to be continued further.

Government troops annexed the key rebel stronghold of Vakarai in the Eastern Province mid-January, putting the area under government control for the first time in over a decade.

President Mahinda Rajapakse who is also the commander-in-chief of the troops visited the area last week and paid tribute to the troops for gaining Vakarai without a single civilian casualty.

Meanwhile the government on Wednesday accused a group of majority Sinhala community activists for working hand-in-glove with LTTE rebels.

Keheliya Rambukwella, the minister of Foreign Employment Promotion and the government's defense spokesman said that a journalist was among the three people arrested for links with the LTTE.

They had confessed to undergoing military training in the rebel held Kilinochchi in the north, Rambukwella told reporters.

He said a large haul of arms and ammunition had been recovered in the possession of the three arrested Sinhalese.