Sri Lanka News Updates with Discussions

Indians in Lanka and came to be known as Sinhala.

SRI LANKA'S army chief said on Monday that his forces have wiped out the conventional military capability of the Tamil Tigers, but that they needed another year to totally defeat the rebels.

Lieutenant General Sarath Fonseka said the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) guerrillas were no longer able to resist security forces using conventional tactics and were resorting to hit and run attacks.

During the same period, the Tigers lost at least 2,000 fighters, Gen Fonseka said, while revising upwards the current Tiger strength to 5,000 combatants. He admitted that previous military estimates of the Tiger strength had been too low.

He said the guerrillas had also been able to recruit more fighters despite losing an estimated 9,000 cadres - according to the military - since August 2006 when security forces stepped up an offensive.

what happened to VP when he closed Mavil Aru sluice gates and invited SLA to war!!

if you don t think Vijaya was not a Sinhala. Why did you bring him in the conversation?

Konappu, you didn t go but you were lurking here and thought I am gone.

you never fail to make me laugh. good entertainment.

LTTE targets softest targets of all, says London Observer

By Walter Jayawardhana

The widely circulated Observer magazine distributed with the Observer newspaper said, in a four page in-depth article, by targeting innocent civilians the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) is fast losing whatever sympathies they had earlier.
The magazine in an article entitled, 'Lost in Paradise' said, the Tamil Tigers 'are going for the softest targets of all, the impoverished working people of Sri Lanka.'
Referring to Sri Lanka's North, the magazine said, 'Here are not only the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam ( LTTE) but their offshoot, the Black Tigers, , the suicide squads. According to Jane's information Group, between 1980-2000 the Tigers had carried out a total of 168 suicide attacks on civilian and military targets, easily exceeding those in the same period by Hezbollah and Hamas combined. And now today, thwarted on their attacks on the government and the military, they are going for the softest targets of all, the impoverished working people of Sri Lanka.'
'For all those decades of suicide practice, you'd think they might be getting the hang of it by now. But in Colombo's Fort Railway Station , a few weeks before my visit , it all went wrong again . A female suicide bomber coming off a train from the South was spotted acting oddly by police-too many clothes for the cloying heat - and fled from the turnstile back into the station. By platform three she sat down and exploded. She took 11 others with her....The 11 dead included half a high school baseball team, and 92 were injured,' wrote Observer staffer, Euan Ferguson.
He categorically said in the article, 'Sri Lanka's war is escalating once again. But this time, it is the country's poorest who are suffering.'
Founded in 1791 the Liberal Democratic leaning left of centre publication with a circulation of approximately 455,000 also referred to an incident where the Tamil Tigers were not that successful in blowing up the impoverished working civilians: 'one passenger, Indrani Fernando, saw a suspicious bag left under a seat near the back. 'When no one claimed it I told the crew and shouted at people to get off,' she says. The bus halted in a middle of a junction and everyone filed off and began walking away, rather quickly and the police were called. Twenty seconds after the driver and conductor had climbed off, the bomb exploded. Ten passers-by were injured, among them children. Indrani later took a congratulatory call from, the President Mahinda Rajapaksa, thanking her for her vigilance. I go to see the bus, towed two miles away. The carcass is eviscerated, skeletal: no one would have survived.'

How the Tamil Tigers have increasingly started targeting unarmed civilians Ferguson further wrote: 'Just before I arrived in Sri Lanka , another bus had been blown up a couple of kilometres outside Dambulla, an ancient holy rest stop on the journey to the East. The 18 killed were almost all pilgrims and included children. In the remote Southern town of Buttala the rebels had recently failed to kill most of the passengers on a bus with a simple bomb so they gunned down 32 of them as they fled, in flames.'

'Desperate tactics have been adopted by the Tigers, but there are increasing signs that by targeting innocent civilians they are fast losing whatever sympathies they once had within the majority Sinhalese population.'
The writer who has returned to the country after the devastating Boxing Day tsunami calls the Indian Ocean island one of the most kind places on earth despite the violence: 'This is one of the kindest countries on earth. Smiles, genuine, empathetic, as natural as waterfall. Even when I was here following the tsunami, I was struck repeatedly by the welcomes from those who had nothing, both the majority Sinhalese and Tamils. And, still you can head south from Colombo without a care in the world, take a breezy taxi to the beaches and beauty of Galle.