Heavy fighting broke out in northern Sri Lanka on the eve of a South Asian summit in the capital, leaving at least 14 government soldiers and 38 rebels killed, a military official said yesterday.
The rebel Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) offered stiff resistance to a military advance in the Mallavi area, deep inside rebel-held territory on Friday, spokesman Udaya Nanayakkara said.
“Terrorists have lobbed hundreds of mortars in order to slow down the advancing soldiers,” the defense ministry said.
The latest clashes came as Sri Lanka hosted a two-day summit of the eight-member South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC) in the capital Colombo yesterday.
The defense ministry said helicopter gunships were deployed to provide cover for ground troops engaged in the battle with the Tigers in the island’s north.
The Tamil Tigers said they had resisted a major military onslaught against them and claimed killing 30 government soldiers and wounding another 60.
The pro-rebel Tamilnet.com Web site reported that the Tigers had also seized a troop carrier that was trying to evacuate wounded soldiers. The guerrillas did not give their casualties.
Friday’s toll raised the number of rebels killed by government soldiers to 5,474, while 492 soldiers have died in combat since January, according to a defense ministry tally.
Casualty claims from either side cannot be verified as the ministry blocks journalists from visiting the frontlines.
The fighting is taking place 250km north of the capital, but there has recently been a string of attacks on Colombo that the government has blamed on the rebels.
The LTTE had offered a unilateral ceasefire for the summit, but Colombo brushed off the proposal and stepped up attacks against rebel positions in the north.
BLOODSHED: North Koreans take extreme measures to avoid being taken prisoner and sometimes execute their own forces, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy on Saturday said that Russian and North Korean forces sustained heavy losses in fighting in Russia’s southern Kursk region. Ukrainian and Western assessments say that about 11,000 North Korean troops are deployed in the Kursk region, where Ukrainian forces occupy swathes of territory after staging a mass cross-border incursion in August last year. In his nightly video address, Zelenskiy quoted a report from Ukrainian Commander-in-Chief Oleksandr Syrskyi as saying that the battles had taken place near the village of Makhnovka, not far from the Ukrainian border. “In battles yesterday and today near just one village, Makhnovka,
HOLLYWOOD IN TURMOIL: Mandy Moore, Paris Hilton and Cary Elwes lost properties to the flames, while awards events planned for this week have been delayed Fires burning in and around Los Angeles have claimed the homes of numerous celebrities, including Billy Crystal, Mandy Moore and Paris Hilton, and led to sweeping disruptions of entertainment events, while at least five people have died. Three awards ceremonies planned for this weekend have been postponed. Next week’s Oscar nominations have been delayed, while tens of thousands of city residents had been displaced and were awaiting word on whether their homes survived the flames — some of them the city’s most famous denizens. More than 1,900 structures had been destroyed and the number was expected to increase. More than 130,000 people
Some things might go without saying, but just in case... Belgium’s food agency issued a public health warning as the festive season wrapped up on Tuesday: Do not eat your Christmas tree. The unusual message came after the city of Ghent, an environmentalist stronghold in the country’s East Flanders region, raised eyebrows by posting tips for recycling the conifers on the dinner table. Pointing with enthusiasm to examples from Scandinavia, the town Web site suggested needles could be stripped, blanched and dried — for use in making flavored butter, for instance. Asked what they thought of the idea, the reply
US Secretary of the Treasury Janet Yellen on Monday met virtually with Chinese Vice Premier He Lifeng (何立峰) and raised concerns about “malicious cyber activity” carried out by Chinese state-sponsored actors, the US Department of the Treasury said in a statement. The department last month reported that an unspecified number of its computers had been compromised by Chinese hackers in what it called a “major incident” following a breach at contractor BeyondTrust, which provides cybersecurity services. US Congressional aides said no date had been set yet for a requested briefing on the breach, the latest in a serious of cyberattacks
RSS