A Sri Lankan government attack on the shrinking territory of the country’s separatist Tamil Tiger rebels has killed a senior leader of the insurgents, the military said.
The death of Sabaratnam Selvathurai on Wednesday would be a boost for the government as it battles for the last rebel stronghold in the north and appears poised to defeat the group after more than 25 years of civil war.
SUICIDE ATTACK
The report of his death came a day after a suicide bomber killed 14 people and critically wounded a government minister in the south.
The military has blamed the assault on the rebels.
Military spokesman Brigadier Udaya Nanayakkara said that troops on the front lines confirmed the killing of Selvathurai, whose nom de guerre was Thamilenthi, in battles in the last rebel-held town of Puthukkudiyiruppu.
Selvathurai was in charge of the Tamil Tigers’ financial unit.
Another major rebel leader, S.P. Tamilselvan, the head of the political wing head, was killed in a 2007 air strike.
The rebels could not be reached for comment, and it was not possible to verify the report independently because reporters are barred from the war zone.
BOOSTING SECURITY
Media Minister Anura Yapa said earlier on Wednesday that the government would put in new security measures across the country after Tuesday’s suicide blast in the southern town of Akuressa showed that even regions far from the war zone in the north were vulnerable to terrorist attacks.
Akuressa is 160km south of Colombo.
“No one believed that this kind of attack could take place in a remote area like Akuressa,” he said. “Definitely, police will implement new security measures to prevent these kinds of attacks.”
He did not elaborate on what the new security measures would entail, saying that senior police officials would decide.
The suicide bomber targeted six Cabinet ministers as they led a religious procession on Tuesday morning.
Human rights and aid groups have voiced concern over tens of thousands of ethnic Tamil civilians trapped in the shrinking sliver of land still under rebel control.
The Tamil Tigers have fought since 1983 for an independent state for the Tamil minority.
Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) is to visit Russia next month for a summit of the BRICS bloc of developing economies, Chinese Minister of Foreign Affairs Wang Yi (王毅) said on Thursday, a move that comes as Moscow and Beijing seek to counter the West’s global influence. Xi’s visit to Russia would be his second since the Kremlin sent troops into Ukraine in February 2022. China claims to take a neutral position in the conflict, but it has backed the Kremlin’s contentions that Russia’s action was provoked by the West, and it continues to supply key components needed by Moscow for
Japan scrambled fighter jets after Russian aircraft flew around the archipelago for the first time in five years, Tokyo said yesterday. From Thursday morning to afternoon, the Russian Tu-142 aircraft flew from the sea between Japan and South Korea toward the southern Okinawa region, the Japanese Ministry of Defense said in a statement. They then traveled north over the Pacific Ocean and finished their journey off the northern island of Hokkaido, it added. The planes did not enter Japanese airspace, but flew over an area subject to a territorial dispute between Japan and Russia, a ministry official said. “In response, we mobilized Air Self-Defense
CRITICISM: ‘One has to choose the lesser of two evils,’ Pope Francis said, as he criticized Trump’s anti-immigrant policies and Harris’ pro-choice position Pope Francis on Friday accused both former US president Donald Trump and US Vice President Kamala Harris of being “against life” as he returned to Rome from a 12-day tour of the Asia-Pacific region. The 87-year-old pontiff’s comments on the US presidential hopefuls came as he defied health concerns to connect with believers from the jungle of Papua New Guinea to the skyscrapers of Singapore. It was Francis’ longest trip in duration and distance since becoming head of the world’s nearly 1.4 billion Roman Catholics more than 11 years ago. Despite the marathon visit, he held a long and spirited
China would train thousands of foreign law enforcement officers to see the world order “develop in a more fair, reasonable and efficient direction,” its minister for public security has said. “We will [also] send police consultants to countries in need to conduct training to help them quickly and effectively improve their law enforcement capabilities,” Chinese Minister of Public Security Wang Xiaohong (王小洪) told an annual global security forum. Wang made the announcement in the eastern city of Lianyungang on Monday in front of law enforcement representatives from 122 countries, regions and international organizations such as Interpol. The forum is part of ongoing