Sri Lanka News Updates with Discussions

K. G. Wijayasinghe, 43, a Police constable attached to Ea'raavoor Police station committed suicide by shooting himself around 2:30 p.m. Wednesday, Police sources said. He was in a disturbed state

COLOMBO, Sri Lanka: The Maldives coast guard Thursday sank a boat suspected of ferrying arms for separatist Tamil Tiger rebels in neighboring Sri Lanka and captured five men, a government spokesman said.

Maldivian fishermen spotted the boat on Wednesday evening and gave chase after believing it was a fishing boat poaching in their waters, Maldives government spokesman Mohamed Hussain Shareef.

When the boat's crew opened fire on the fishermen, they informed the Maldivian coast guard, which later sank it after a 10-hour stand off, Shareef said.

One of the men captured later said the boat had weapons and ammunition aboard, Shareef said, adding the five were being interrogated.

Maldives, an archipelago of 1,200 coral islands, is located 400 nautical miles (740 nautical kilometers) southwest of Sri Lanka.

Tamil Tiger spokesman Rasiah Ilanthirayan denied the rebels' involvement. ''We have nothing to do with this and they are not our people,'' he told The Associated Press by telephone.

In 1988 a former Tamil separatist group based in Sri Lanka, People's Liberation Organization of Tamil Eelam, attempted to overthrow President Maumoon Abdul Gayoom and seize power in Maldives for a group of local dissidents. In return, the group was to receive a base on the archipelago.

However, Maldives security forces, with help from India, defeated the coup. The Tamil group later gave up arms and entered mainstream Sri Lankan politics.

The Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam rebels have continued to fight for more than two decades to create a separate homeland for the country's 3.1 million ethnic minority Tamils, who have faced discrimination by the majority Sinhalese-dominated government.

More than 70,000 people have been killed in the fighting.

We are now treating this with caution, because the man was speaking Malayalam and not Tamil,' said chief government spokesman Mohamed Shareef.

Unemployment of poor Sri Lankan myouth is solved by sending them to North and East.

K. G. Wijayasinghe, 43, a Police constable attached to Ea'raavoor Police station committed suicide by shooting himself around 2:30 p.m. Wednesday, Police sources said. He was in a disturbed state

However one man who threw himself overboard before the clash and surrendered spoke the south Indian language Malayalam and not Tamil, and officials were treating the alleged rebel link with caution.

He said there was confusion over an initial coastguard report that the man had identified himself as a Tamil Tiger.

''A government spokesman said one of the captured men SAID four people HE BELIEVED to be Tamil Tigers had boarded his 80 ft (25 metre) fishing trawler at sea and loaded it with guns and mortar bombs.''

Unemployment of poor Sri Lankan myouth is solved by sending them to North and East.

K. G. Wijayasinghe, 43, a Police constable attached to Ea'raavoor Police station committed suicide by shooting himself around 2:30 p.m. Wednesday, Police sources said. He was in a disturbed state