Government troops fighting Tamil Tiger separatists across the jungles of northern Sri Lanka killed 52 rebel fighters in recent days, the military said yesterday.
Soldiers killed eight guerrillas in fighting on Wednesday along the front lines in Vavuniya region, the military said in a statement.
In the nearby Mannar District, soldiers attacked rebel bunkers and killed seven fighters, while in the northeastern Welioya region, seven other guerrillas were killed, the military said.
The newly reported deaths brought the overall toll in Wednesday's fighting to 39, including two soldiers killed by a roadside bomb, the military said.
It also announced that it killed 13 rebels in an artillery attack on Tuesday.
There was no immediate comment from the rebels. Both sides in the conflict exaggerate enemy casualties while underreporting their own. It was not possible to independently verify the reports because the fighting took place deep in the northern jungles, where access is restricted.
Violence has escalated on the Indian Ocean island since the government withdrew last month from a 2002 ceasefire with the Tamil rebels.
The Tamil Tigers have been fighting since 1983 for an independent homeland for ethnic minority Tamils, who have been marginalized for decades by Sinhalese-dominated governments.
The fighting has killed more than 70,000 people.
The 2002 truce fostered hopes for a lasting peace, but broke down as fighting over the past two years killed 5,000 people.
Nearly 1,500 people have been killed since the government announced its withdrawal from the ceasefire, according to the military.
CARTEL ARRESTS: The president said that a US government operation to arrest two cartel members made it jointly responsible for the unrest in the state’s capital Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador on Thursday blamed the US in part for a surge in cartel violence in the northern state of Sinaloa that has left at least 30 people dead in the past week. Two warring factions of the Sinaloa cartel have clashed in the state capital of Culiacan in what appears to be a fight for power after two of its leaders were arrested in the US in late July. Teams of gunmen have shot at each other and the security forces. Meanwhile, dead bodies continued to be found across the city. On one busy street corner, cars drove
‘CICADA VOTERS’: A Fairfax County elections official said about one-third of local voters came to the polls on election day in 2020, while the rest voted by mail or early The Democratic and Republican national conventions are just a memory, the first and perhaps only debate between US Vice President Kamala Harris and former US president Donald Trump is in the bag and election offices are beginning to send out absentee ballots. Now come the voters. Yesterday was the start of early in-person voting for the US presidential election on Nov. 5, starting in Virginia, South Dakota and the home state of Harris’ running mate, Minnesota Governor Tim Walz. The first ballots being cast in person were made with just over six weeks left before election day. About a dozen more states will
Peruvian authorities on Thursday scrambled to roll out a plan to fight fires raging out of control across the nation, razing crops, damaging archeological treasures and leaving several regions in a state of disaster. Firefighters said battling the blazes has grown increasingly difficult. “We’re tired,” said a volunteer firefighter in the forests of the northern Amazonas region who declined to give his name. “We put the fire out, it lights back up. We put it out, the fire breaks out again.” Firefighters in the area retreated from the flames on Thursday. “They’re out of control,” said Arturo Morales, another volunteer firefighter. “We need help.” Peruvian
The pitch is a classic: A young celebrity with no climbing experience spends a year in hard training and scales Mount Everest, succeeding against some — if not all — odds. French YouTuber Ines Benazzouz, known as Inoxtag, brought the story to life with a two-hour-plus documentary about his year preparing for the ultimate challenge. The film, titled Kaizen, proved a smash hit on its release last weekend. Young fans queued around the block to get into a preview screening in Paris, with Inoxtag’s management on Monday saying the film had smashed the box office record for a special cinema