Sri Lanka’s air force bombed and destroyed a Tamil separatist training camp in the island’s north, while battles along the northern front lines left 21 rebels and five soldiers dead, the military said yesterday.
Fighter jets destroyed the Tamil Tiger rebel camp on the Jaffna peninsula in the morning atttack, air force spokesman Wing Commander Andy Wijesuriya said.
Wijesuriya said he did not have details of how many people were in the camp at the time of the airstrike and could not say if there were any casualties.
On Thursday, government troops clashed with Tamil guerrillas in Vavuniya district, just south of the rebels’ de facto state in the north, a defense ministry official said.
Fourteen rebels died in the fighting and eight soldiers were wounded, the official said on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak to the media.
Separate violence in Jaffna, Mannar and Welioya districts left seven rebels and five soldiers dead on Thursday, he said.
Rebel spokesman Rasiah Ilanthirayan did not answer calls seeking comment.
It was not possible to independently verify the military’s claims because journalists are banned from the war zone. The government and rebels often exaggerate the other side’s casualties and underreport their own.
Reports of fighting have increased in recent months amid government promises to capture the rebels’ de facto state in the north and crush the group by the end of the year. But diplomats and other observers say the army is facing more resistance than it had expected.
The rebels have fought since 1983 for an independent homeland for ethnic minority Tamils, who have been marginalized for decades by successive governments run by majority ethnic Sinhalese. More than 70,000 people have been killed in the violence.
Meanwhile, fighting was raging near the Catholic pilgrimage area of Madhu in the northwestern coastal district of Mannar, reports by the rebels and the security forces said.
Priests there have moved the highly venerated statue of Mary from the church fearing that it could be hit in the crossfire, church authorities said.
“Today, the historic shrine itself has to seek refuge. I have told the remaining priests to withdraw from the church area in view of the fighting,” Rayappu Joseph, the bishop of Mannar, said by telephone.
The latest defense ministry casualty toll brings to at least 2,616 the number of rebels said to have been killed by security forces since January.
X-37B COMPARISON: China’s spaceplane is most likely testing technology, much like US’ vehicle, said Victoria Samson, an official at the Secure World Foundation China’s shadowy, uncrewed reusable spacecraft, which launches atop a rocket booster and lands at a secretive military airfield, is most likely testing technology, but could also be used for manipulating or retrieving satellites, experts said. The spacecraft, on its third mission, was last month observed releasing an object, moving several kilometers away and then maneuvering back to within a few hundred meters of it. “It’s obvious that it has a military application, including, for example, closely inspecting objects of the enemy or disabling them, but it also has non-military applications,” said Marco Langbroek, a lecturer in optical space situational awareness at Delft
Through a basement door in southeastern Turkey lies a sprawling underground city — perhaps the country’s largest — which one historian believes dates back to the ninth century BC. Archeologists stumbled upon the city-under-a-city “almost by chance” after an excavation of house cellars in Midyat, near the Syrian border, led to the discovery of a vast labyrinth of caves in 2020. Workers have already cleared more than 50 subterranean rooms, all connected by 120m of tunnel carved out of the rock. However, that is only a fraction of the site’s estimated 900,000m2 area, which would make it the largest underground city in Turkey’s
Soaring high across a gorge in the rugged Himalayas, a newly finished bridge would soon help India entrench control of disputed Kashmir and meet a rising strategic threat from China. The Chenab Rail Bridge, the highest of its kind in the world, has been hailed as a feat of engineering linking the restive Kashmir valley to the vast Indian plains by train for the first time. However, its completion has sparked concern among some in a territory with a long history of opposing Indian rule, already home to a permanent garrison of more than 500,000 soldiers. India’s military brass say the strategic benefits
‘RADICAL LEFT LUNATIC’: Trump earlier criticized Kamala Harris, his new opponent, calling her ‘the ultra-liberal driving force behind every single Biden catastrophe’ US President Joe Biden on Wednesday called on voters to defend the country’s democracy as he explained his decision to drop his bid for re-election and throw his support behind US Vice President Kamala Harris. As “the defense of democracy is more important than any title,” Biden said that he was stepping aside to deliver an implicit repudiation of former US president Donald Trump in his first public address since his announcement on Sunday that he would not be the Democratic candidate. He did not name Trump, whom he has called an existential threat to democracy. “Nothing, nothing can come in the