Sri Lanka’s Tamil Tiger rebels mounted counter-attacks against government troops and killed at least 60 soldiers besieging their political headquarters, the guerrillas said yesterday.
The Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) said they had re-taken positions from government forces who have been closing in on the northern town of Kilinochchi, the Tiger’s political capital.
The pro-rebel Tamilnet Web site quoted Tiger officials saying that they had killed 60 soldiers and wounded another 150 in Saturday’s fighting. The rebels also claimed they had the bodies of 12 soldiers.
The Tigers did not give details of their own casualties, but the defense ministry said the guerrillas suffered “heavy damages” when troops hit back.
The defense ministry rejected rebel claims of high military losses and placed security force casualties at 13 soldiers killed and 40 wounded.
Both sides are known to make exaggerated claims about the casualties they have inflicted on each other, and independent verification is virtually impossible with journalists and aid workers barred from the conflict area.
The latest Tiger claims of heavy counter-attacks came as the military said the air force had carried out strikes against Tiger positions and government troops had made a fresh bid to penetrate defenses around Kilinochchi.
Planes carried out seven bombing sorties on Saturday in support of soldiers trying to capture the town, the defense ministry said.
“Air force fighter jets made seven successive air strikes targeting LTTE defenses and strategic locations in Wanni [where Kilinochchi is the capital],” the ministry said.
The navy on Saturday destroyed a Tamil Tiger vessel carrying arms and other supplies off the island’s northeastern coast, the ministry said.
There was no immediate comment from the Tigers about the reported sea battle.
In the sweltering streets of Jakarta, buskers carry towering, hollow puppets and pass around a bucket for donations. Now, they fear becoming outlaws. City authorities said they would crack down on use of the sacred ondel-ondel puppets, which can stand as tall as a truck, and they are drafting legislation to remove what they view as a street nuisance. Performances featuring the puppets — originally used by Jakarta’s Betawi people to ward off evil spirits — would be allowed only at set events. The ban could leave many ondel-ondel buskers in Jakarta jobless. “I am confused and anxious. I fear getting raided or even
Kemal Ozdemir looked up at the bare peaks of Mount Cilo in Turkey’s Kurdish majority southeast. “There were glaciers 10 years ago,” he recalled under a cloudless sky. A mountain guide for 15 years, Ozdemir then turned toward the torrent carrying dozens of blocks of ice below a slope covered with grass and rocks — a sign of glacier loss being exacerbated by global warming. “You can see that there are quite a few pieces of glacier in the water right now ... the reason why the waterfalls flow lushly actually shows us how fast the ice is melting,” he said.
RISING RACISM: A Japanese group called on China to assure safety in the country, while the Chinese embassy in Tokyo urged action against a ‘surge in xenophobia’ A Japanese woman living in China was attacked and injured by a man in a subway station in Suzhou, China, Japanese media said, hours after two Chinese men were seriously injured in violence in Tokyo. The attacks on Thursday raised concern about xenophobic sentiment in China and Japan that have been blamed for assaults in both countries. It was the third attack involving Japanese living in China since last year. In the two previous cases in China, Chinese authorities have insisted they were isolated incidents. Japanese broadcaster NHK did not identify the woman injured in Suzhou by name, but, citing the Japanese
RESTRUCTURE: Myanmar’s military has ended emergency rule and announced plans for elections in December, but critics said the move aims to entrench junta control Myanmar’s military government announced on Thursday that it was ending the state of emergency declared after it seized power in 2021 and would restructure administrative bodies to prepare for the new election at the end of the year. However, the polls planned for an unspecified date in December face serious obstacles, including a civil war raging over most of the country and pledges by opponents of the military rule to derail the election because they believe it can be neither free nor fair. Under the restructuring, Myanmar’s junta chief Min Aung Hlaing is giving up two posts, but would stay at the
RSS