A top UN official condemned a kamikaze rebel attack on Sri Lanka’s capital and urged both sides in the nation’s civil war to avoid a “final bloodbath.” Hours later, suspected Tamil separatists killed eight people in a shooting and stabbing attack.
The surprise suicide plane attacks in Colombo late on Friday killed four people — including two rebel pilots — and embarrassed the government, which only two weeks ago claimed it had effectively grounded the Tamil Tigers’ small force of light aircraft by seizing all rebel airstrips.
The attacks also signaled the Tamil Tigers were not ready to give up their fight for an independent state for minority Tamils, despite an unrelenting government offensive against the rebels’ heartland in the north.
In a separate attack, suspected rebels stormed a village on Saturday evening near the eastern Sri Lankan town of Ampara, shooting and stabbing to death six civilians and two police officers, the military said. Rebel officials could not be reached for comment.
That attack highlighted fears that the rebels, who were driven from their eastern strongholds two years ago by the government, maintained the ability to carry out guerrilla attacks at will.
The military has vowed to crush the group and end the 25-year-old civil war. Government forces have driven the rebels out of much of their de facto northern state in recent months and trapped them in a tiny sliver of land along the northeastern coast along with tens of thousands of Tamil civilians.
Reports of high civilian casualties in the conflict have spurred international observers to speak out. Human Rights Watch said on Friday some 2,000 noncombatants had been killed and accused both sides of war crimes, calling on them to immediately stop “the ongoing slaughter of civilians.”
UN humanitarian chief John Holmes said on Saturday that the UN was afraid for the civilians trapped in the shrinking war zone.
“I fear the reality is that significant numbers of people are still killed and injured every day in that pocket,” Holmes said at the end of a three-day trip to Sri Lanka.
Holmes, who met top government officials and visited displacement camps south of the fighting, said not enough food and other aid was reaching the trapped civilians and he raised concerns about the heavy military presence at the camps for the more than 30,000 civilians who have fled the war zone.
He promised the UN would send US$10 million in emergency aid for food, medicine, shelter and other necessities for the displaced civilians, and urged both sides to ensure an orderly end to the conflict.
“What we need to avoid is a final bloodbath, if you like, at the end of this process, that could be dreadful for the civilian population as well as for the future [of the country],” Holmes said.
A fire caused by a burst gas pipe yesterday spread to several homes and sent a fireball soaring into the sky outside Malaysia’s largest city, injuring more than 100 people. The towering inferno near a gas station in Putra Heights outside Kuala Lumpur was visible for kilometers and lasted for several hours. It happened during a public holiday as Muslims, who are the majority in Malaysia, celebrate the second day of Eid al-Fitr. National oil company Petronas said the fire started at one of its gas pipelines at 8:10am and the affected pipeline was later isolated. Disaster management officials said shutting the
US Vice President J.D. Vance on Friday accused Denmark of not having done enough to protect Greenland, when he visited the strategically placed and resource-rich Danish territory coveted by US President Donald Trump. Vance made his comment during a trip to the Pituffik Space Base in northwestern Greenland, a visit viewed by Copenhagen and Nuuk as a provocation. “Our message to Denmark is very simple: You have not done a good job by the people of Greenland,” Vance told a news conference. “You have under-invested in the people of Greenland, and you have under-invested in the security architecture of this
Japan unveiled a plan on Thursday to evacuate around 120,000 residents and tourists from its southern islets near Taiwan within six days in the event of an “emergency”. The plan was put together as “the security situation surrounding our nation grows severe” and with an “emergency” in mind, the government’s crisis management office said. Exactly what that emergency might be was left unspecified in the plan but it envisages the evacuation of around 120,000 people in five Japanese islets close to Taiwan. China claims Taiwan as part of its territory and has stepped up military pressure in recent years, including
UNREST: The authorities in Turkey arrested 13 Turkish journalists in five days, deported a BBC correspondent and on Thursday arrested a reporter from Sweden Waving flags and chanting slogans, many hundreds of thousands of anti-government demonstrators on Saturday rallied in Istanbul, Turkey, in defence of democracy after the arrest of Istanbul Mayor Ekrem Imamoglu which sparked Turkey’s worst street unrest in more than a decade. Under a cloudless blue sky, vast crowds gathered in Maltepe on the Asian side of Turkey’s biggest city on the eve of the Eid al-Fitr celebration which started yesterday, marking the end of Ramadan. Ozgur Ozel, chairman of the main opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP), which organized the rally, said there were 2.2 million people in the crowd, but