Government troops captured a Tamil Tiger rebel-held town in war-ravaged northern Sri Lanka on Friday and a key Tiger supply base on Thursday, while infantry clashes across the region killed dozens, the military said yesterday.
Fighting has escalated in this Indian Ocean island in recent months as government forces try to fulfill a pledge to crush the insurgents by the end of this year.
In the latest fighting, army troops took control of Andankulam town in Mannar after a battle that killed 28 rebels and one soldier Friday, military spokesman Brigadier Udaya Nanayakkara said.
The town’s capture came a day after the troops seized a key supply base in Vavuniya District that had been used to replenish the Tamil Tigers’ front-line troops.
Nanayakkara said the capture of the base and town were strategically important for government troops to gain control of rebels’ northern strongholds.
Other battles on Friday killed 12 rebels and one soldier in the Welioya region, while in the northern Jaffna peninsula a soldier died in a roadside bomb blast blamed on rebels, Nanayakkara said.
The military says fighting over the past week has killed 220 rebels and 22 soldiers. Analysts accuse both sides of exaggerating enemy losses and underreporting their own casualties.
Rebel spokesman Rasiah Ilanthirayan was not immediately available for comment.
It was not possible to independently verify the military’s claims because journalists are banned from the northern jungles where much of the fighting takes place.
The Tamil Tiger rebels have fought since 1983 to create an independent state for ethnic minority Tamils.
The government vows to capture rebel-held territory and to crush the insurgents by next year but diplomats and other observers say the army has faced more resistance than expected.
James Watson — the Nobel laureate co-credited with the pivotal discovery of DNA’s double-helix structure, but whose career was later tainted by his repeated racist remarks — has died, his former lab said on Friday. He was 97. The eminent biologist died on Thursday in hospice care on Long Island in New York, announced the Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, where he was based for much of his career. Watson became among the 20th century’s most storied scientists for his 1953 breakthrough discovery of the double helix with researcher partner Francis Crick. Along with Crick and Maurice Wilkins, he shared the
OUTRAGE: The former strongman was accused of corruption and responsibility for the killings of hundreds of thousands of political opponents during his time in office Indonesia yesterday awarded the title of national hero to late president Suharto, provoking outrage from rights groups who said the move was an attempt to whitewash decades of human rights abuses and corruption that took place during his 32 years in power. Suharto was a US ally during the Cold War who presided over decades of authoritarian rule, during which up to 1 million political opponents were killed, until he was toppled by protests in 1998. He was one of 10 people recognized by Indonesian President Prabowo Subianto in a televised ceremony held at the presidential palace in Jakarta to mark National
US President Donald Trump handed Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban a one-year exemption from sanctions for buying Russian oil and gas after the close right-wing allies held a chummy White House meeting on Friday. Trump slapped sanctions on Moscow’s two largest oil companies last month after losing patience with Russian President Vladimir Putin over his refusal to end the nearly four-year-old invasion of Ukraine. However, while Trump has pushed other European countries to stop buying oil that he says funds Moscow’s war machine, Orban used his first trip to the White House since Trump’s return to power to push for
LANDMARK: After first meeting Trump in Riyadh in May, al-Sharaa’s visit to the White House today would be the first by a Syrian leader since the country’s independence Syrian President Ahmed al-Sharaa arrived in the US on Saturday for a landmark official visit, his country’s state news agency SANA reported, a day after Washington removed him from a terrorism blacklist. Sharaa, whose rebel forces ousted long-time former Syrian president Bashar al-Assad late last year, is due to meet US President Donald Trump at the White House today. It is the first such visit by a Syrian president since the country’s independence in 1946, according to analysts. The interim leader met Trump for the first time in Riyadh during the US president’s regional tour in May. US envoy to Syria Tom Barrack earlier
RSS