Posted on 11/03/2007 2:31:41 PM PDT by george76
Sri Lankan fighter jets bombed a secret rebel communications center early yesterday, killing the Tamil Tigers' political chief and five others in a strike expected to deal a sharp blow to the guerrillas' morale.
The killing of S.P. Tamilselvan, who acted as the public face of the rebels, was widely seen as a public relations coup for the government. But analysts feared it would further escalate the more than two-decade-old civil war and spark a cycle of political assassinations across this Indian Ocean island nation.
"This is a message that we know their leaders' location," Defense Secretary Gotabhaya Rajapaksa said. "This confirms that our information is very accurate."
Hours after the attack, the Tigers named the police chief of their de facto state as Tamilselvan's replacement. The rebels announced in an e-mail that P. Nadesan, who was a delegate to earlier peace talks, would take over as head of their political wing.
The 6 a.m. air strike blasted a compound deep inside rebel-held territory in northern Sri Lanka used as a communications center with Tamil sympathizers abroad...
Fighting between the two sides has escalated in recent weeks as government officials hinted they were preparing an offensive to capture the north and crush the rebels
(Excerpt) Read more at boston.com ...
.
Colonel Karuna, the leader of a breakaway faction of Sri Lanka’s Tamil Tigers rebel group, has been arrested in Britain and is being held in immigration detention.
Vinayagamoorthi Muralitharan, better known as Colonel Karuna, was arrested in an operation carried out by Britain’s immigration authority and the London police, the Home Office said.
Karuna, the rebel Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE)’s former eastern commander, led an unprecedented split from the group in March 2004 and is said to be collaborating with government forces against the main guerrilla outfit.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20071102/wl_uk_afp/srilankaunrestbritainarrest_071102204835
Sri Lanka struck a major blow against the Tamil Tigers...
bad news for terrorists ping.
The media make this seem like a big setback for PEACE, because the corpse was the former Tamil Tiger negotiator at the PEACE talks.
The Tamil Tigers are a terrorist group, one of the most successful and well organized in the world. They impose on the pacific instincts of the Buddhist majority in Sri Lanka, but I think that finally even Buddhists can get their fill of killers. The fighting has stepped up, and I think that the majority population is less likely now to follow their past course, which was to fall for “peace talks” every time they began to get traction on the battlefield.
India has been allowing (or winking at) support for the TTT (Tamil Tiger Terrorists) from the mainland, without which the TTT would fold.
BTTT
widely seen as a public relations coup for the government. But analysts feared it would further escalate the more than two-decade-old civil war and spark a cycle of political assassinations across this Indian Ocean island nation.The analysts must be a small committee of partisan media shills who feign the same reaction to each such small victory.
Sounds like the British gov’t is aiding the terrorists.
yes.
again ?
:’)
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.