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.
Archeologists in Peru on Thursday said they found the 5,000-year-old remains of a noblewoman at the sacred city of Caral, revealing the important role played by women in the oldest center of civilization in the Americas. “What has been discovered corresponds to a woman who apparently had elevated status, an elite woman,” archeologist David Palomino said. The mummy was found in Aspero, a sacred site within the city of Caral that was a garbage dump for more than 30 years until becoming an archeological site in the 1990s. Palomino said the carefully preserved remains, dating to 3,000BC, contained skin, part of the
TRUMP EFFECT: The win capped one of the most dramatic turnarounds in Canadian political history after the Conservatives had led the Liberals by more than 20 points Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney yesterday pledged to win US President Donald Trump’s trade war after winning Canada’s election and leading his Liberal Party to another term in power. Following a campaign dominated by Trump’s tariffs and annexation threats, Carney promised to chart “a new path forward” in a world “fundamentally changed” by a US that is newly hostile to free trade. “We are over the shock of the American betrayal, but we should never forget the lessons,” said Carney, who led the central banks of Canada and the UK before entering politics earlier this year. “We will win this trade war and
‘BODIES EVERYWHERE’: The incident occurred at a Filipino festival celebrating an anti-colonial leader, with the driver described as a ‘lone suspect’ known to police Canadian police arrested a man on Saturday after a car plowed into a street party in the western Canadian city of Vancouver, killing a number of people. Authorities said the incident happened shortly after 8pm in Vancouver’s Sunset on Fraser neighborhood as members of the Filipino community gathered to celebrate Lapu Lapu Day. The festival, which commemorates a Filipino anti-colonial leader from the 16th century, falls this year on the weekend before Canada’s election. A 30-year-old local man was arrested at the scene, Vancouver police wrote on X. The driver was a “lone suspect” known to police, a police spokesperson told journalists at the
North Korean leader Kim Jong-un has unveiled a new naval destroyer, claiming it as a significant advancement toward his goal of expanding the operational range and preemptive strike capabilities of his nuclear-armed military, state media said yesterday. North Korea’s state-run Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) said Kim attended the launching ceremony for the 5,000-tonne warship on Friday at the western port of Nampo. Kim framed the arms buildup as a response to perceived threats from the US and its allies in Asia, who have been expanding joint military exercises amid rising tensions over the North’s nuclear program. He added that the acquisition
RSS