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.
In months, Lo Yuet-ping would bid farewell to a centuries-old village he has called home in Hong Kong for more than seven decades. The Cha Kwo Ling village in east Kowloon is filled with small houses built from metal sheets and stones, as well as old granite buildings, contrasting sharply with the high-rise structures that dominate much of the Asian financial hub. Lo, 72, has spent his entire life here and is among an estimated 860 households required to move under a government redevelopment plan. He said he would miss the rich history, unique culture and warm interpersonal kindness that defined life in
AERIAL INCURSIONS: The incidents are a reminder that Russia’s aggressive actions go beyond Ukraine’s borders, Ukrainian Minister of Foreign Affairs Andrii Sybiha said Two NATO members on Sunday said that Russian drones violated their airspace, as one reportedly flew into Romania during nighttime attacks on neighboring Ukraine, while another crashed in eastern Latvia the previous day. A drone entered Romanian territory early on Sunday as Moscow struck “civilian targets and port infrastructure” across the Danube in Ukraine, the Romanian Ministry of National Defense said. It added that Bucharest had deployed F-16 warplanes to monitor its airspace and issued text alerts to residents of two eastern regions. It also said investigations were underway of a potential “impact zone” in an uninhabited area along the Romanian-Ukrainian border. There
A French woman whose husband has admitted to enlisting dozens of strangers to rape her while she was drugged on Thursday told his trial that police had saved her life by uncovering the crimes. “The police saved my life by investigating Mister Pelicot’s computer,” Gisele Pelicot told the court in the southern city of Avignon, referring to her husband — one of 51 of her alleged abusers on trial — by only his surname. Speaking for the first time since the extraordinary trial began on Monday, Gisele Pelicot, now 71, revealed her emotion in almost 90 minutes of testimony, recounting her mysterious
The governor of Ohio is to send law enforcement and millions of dollars in healthcare resources to the city of Springfield as it faces a surge in temporary Haitian migrants. Ohio Governor Mike DeWine on Tuesday said that he does not oppose the Temporary Protected Status program under which about 15,000 Haitians have arrived in the city of about 59,000 people since 2020, but said the federal government must do more to help affected communities. On Monday, Ohio Attorney General Dave Yost directed his office to research legal avenues — including filing a lawsuit — to stop the federal government from sending