Sri Lanka’s military will not attack the Tamil Tigers for the next three days to allow thousands of civilians to escape a no-fire zone where they are being held by the separatists, the president said yesterday.
Soldiers have encircled the remnants of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) in a 17km² no-fire zone on the northeast coast and are close to crushing them as a conventional force and ending Asia’s longest-running civil war.
Sri Lankan President Mahinda Rajapaksa said in a statement that people should be “given uninhibited freedom of movement from the no-fire zone” in the Sinhala and Tamil New Year period which goes through tomorrow.
PHOTO: AP
“With this objective in view, His Excellency has directed the armed forces of the state to restrict their operations during the New Year to those of a defensive nature,” the president’s office said.
There was no immediate comment from the LTTE, whose agreement to let the people go is essential. The UN and witnesses say people are being kept as human shields and forced conscripts or being shot as they try to flee.
The LTTE so far has refused any diplomatic entreaties to get them to release people, whom they insist are staying by choice.
Diplomats have been working furiously to negotiate an exit strategy for the people, who number 60,000 according to the government and about 100,000, according to the UN.
“In the true spirit of the season, it is timely for the LTTE to acknowledge its military defeat and lay down its weapons and surrender. The LTTE must also renounce terrorism and violence permanently,” the statement said.
The Tigers have vowed not to give up their fight for a separate nation for Sri Lanka’s Tamil minority, which has engulfed the Indian Ocean island nation in a civil war that has killed at least 70,000 since 1983.
In the latest of a series of international demonstrations over the war, around 100,000 people marched through London on Saturday to demand a ceasefire between Sri Lankan forces and the Tigers.
The march through central London, organized by a British Tamil group, was the biggest yet in a week of demonstrations by Tamils and their supporters in various cities.
In months, Lo Yuet-ping would bid farewell to a centuries-old village he has called home in Hong Kong for more than seven decades. The Cha Kwo Ling village in east Kowloon is filled with small houses built from metal sheets and stones, as well as old granite buildings, contrasting sharply with the high-rise structures that dominate much of the Asian financial hub. Lo, 72, has spent his entire life here and is among an estimated 860 households required to move under a government redevelopment plan. He said he would miss the rich history, unique culture and warm interpersonal kindness that defined life in
AERIAL INCURSIONS: The incidents are a reminder that Russia’s aggressive actions go beyond Ukraine’s borders, Ukrainian Minister of Foreign Affairs Andrii Sybiha said Two NATO members on Sunday said that Russian drones violated their airspace, as one reportedly flew into Romania during nighttime attacks on neighboring Ukraine, while another crashed in eastern Latvia the previous day. A drone entered Romanian territory early on Sunday as Moscow struck “civilian targets and port infrastructure” across the Danube in Ukraine, the Romanian Ministry of National Defense said. It added that Bucharest had deployed F-16 warplanes to monitor its airspace and issued text alerts to residents of two eastern regions. It also said investigations were underway of a potential “impact zone” in an uninhabited area along the Romanian-Ukrainian border. There
The governor of Ohio is to send law enforcement and millions of dollars in healthcare resources to the city of Springfield as it faces a surge in temporary Haitian migrants. Ohio Governor Mike DeWine on Tuesday said that he does not oppose the Temporary Protected Status program under which about 15,000 Haitians have arrived in the city of about 59,000 people since 2020, but said the federal government must do more to help affected communities. On Monday, Ohio Attorney General Dave Yost directed his office to research legal avenues — including filing a lawsuit — to stop the federal government from sending
A Zurich city councilor has apologized and reportedly sought police protection against threats after she fired a sport pistol at an auction poster of a 14th-century Madonna and child painting, and posted images of their bullet-ridden faces on social media. Green-Liberal party official Sanija Ameti, 32, put the images on Instagram over the weekend before quickly pulling them down. She later wrote on social media that she had been practicing shots from about 10m and only found the poster as “big enough” for a suitable target. “I apologize to the people who were hurt by my post. I deleted it immediately when I
RSS