Sri Lanka's president vowed yesterday to crush Tamil Tiger rebels after a rush-hour train bombing blamed on the insurgents killed eight passengers and wounded 70 others.
“I will not stop till terrorism is defeated,” Sri Lankan President Mahinda Rajapaksa told a meeting with media officials, according to a statement from his office.
“No one should have expectations that there will be a letup in the battle against terrorism because of the frenzied attacks” by the rebels, the statement quoted Rajapaksa as saying.
The bomb blast took place inside a train during Monday evening’s rush hour. The train was preparing to leave a station in Dehiwala, just south of Colombo, when the blast tore through it.
Rajapaksa said the rebels had resorted to targeting civilians to divert the government’s attention from its successful operations against them in the north.
BOMBER BOMBED
Meanwhile, the military said air force helicopters bombed and destroyed a rebel explosives storage depot in northern Sri Lanka on Monday, killing a guerrilla bomb-making expert.
The air force targeted the explosives stash in Mannar district’s Andankulam village, a military official said on condition of anonymity, citing government rules.
The official also said separate ground clashes on Monday killed 20 rebels on the northern front lines in the Mannar, Vavuniya and Welioya areas.
Rebel spokesman Rasiah Ilanthirayan could not be reached for comment. It was not possible to get independent confirmation of the military’s claims because reporters are not allowed in the war zone. Each side routinely exaggerates damage inflicted on its enemy and underreports its own losses.
RECENT CLASHES
Government forces and the separatist Tamil Tigers have engaged in violent clashes for the past several months around the guerrillas’ northern stronghold.
Scores of civilians have also been killed in bus and train bombings, most of which the government has blamed on the Tigers. The rebels have denied involvement in some attacks, but have not commented on many others.
The Tamil Tigers have fought since 1983 to create an independent homeland for minority ethnic Tamils, who have faced decades of discrimination at the hands of successive governments controlled by majority Sinhalese.
With the midday sun blazing, an experimental orange and white F-16 fighter jet launched with a familiar roar that is a hallmark of US airpower, but the aerial combat that followed was unlike any other: This F-16 was controlled by artificial intelligence (AI), not a human pilot, and riding in the front seat was US Secretary of the Air Force Frank Kendall. AI marks one of the biggest advances in military aviation since the introduction of stealth in the early 1990s, and the US Air Force has aggressively leaned in. Even though the technology is not fully developed, the service is planning
INTERNATIONAL PROBE: Australian and US authorities were helping coordinate the investigation of the case, which follows the 2015 murder of Australian surfers in Mexico Three bodies were found in Mexico’s Baja California state, the FBI said on Friday, days after two Australians and an American went missing during a surfing trip in an area hit by cartel violence. Authorities used a pulley system to hoist what appeared to be lifeless bodies covered in mud from a shaft on a cliff high above the Pacific. “We confirm there were three individuals found deceased in Santo Tomas, Baja California,” a statement from the FBI’s office in San Diego, California, said without providing the identities of the victims. Australian brothers Jake and Callum Robinson and their American friend Jack Carter
Le Tuan Binh keeps his Moroccan soldier father’s tombstone at his village home north of Hanoi, a treasured reminder of a man whose community in Vietnam has been largely forgotten. Mzid Ben Ali, or “Mohammed” as Binh calls him, was one of tens of thousands of North Africans who served in the French army as it battled to maintain its colonial rule of Indochina. He fought for France against the Viet Minh independence movement in the 1950s, before leaving the military — as either a defector or a captive — and making a life for himself in Vietnam. “It’s very emotional for me,”
UNDER INVESTIGATION: Members of the local Muslim community had raised concerns with the police about the boy, who officials said might have been radicalized online A 16-year-old boy armed with a knife was shot dead by police after he stabbed a man in the Australian west coast city of Perth, officials said yesterday. The incident occurred in the parking lot of a hardware store in suburban Willetton on Saturday night. The teen attacked the man and then rushed at police officers before he was shot, Western Australian Premier Roger Cook told reporters. “There are indications he had been radicalized online,” Cook told a news conference, adding that it appeared he acted alone. A man in his 30s was found at the scene with a stab wound to his back.