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The International Monetary Fund said Wednesday that it has sold 10 metric tons of gold to Sri Lanka, the third customer to acquire a portion of its gold holdings. The IMF in September finalized a plan to sell 403.3 metric tons of gold—an amount equivalent to about one-eighth of its total holdings. The IMF previously announced the sales of 200 metric tons of gold to India and 2 metric tons to Mauritius.

Sri Lanka declares war over, Tamil Tiger leader dead by Amal Jayasinghe Mon May 18, 4:09 pm ET COLOMBO (AFP) – The Sri Lankan government on Monday declared an end to its decades-old conflict with the Tamil Tigers, after routing the remnants of the rebel army and killing its leader Velupillai Prabhakaran. The army said its commandos overran the last sliver of Tiger territory, killing the last 300 fighters and decimating the rebel leadership. It said Prabhakaran and two deputies were shot dead trying to flee in a van and ambulance. "We have successfully ended the war," the island's powerful...

More than 10,000 Sri Lankan civilians have fled in the past few days from rebel-held territory in the north, the government says. Sri Lankan President Mahinda Rajapakse called on the Tamil Tigers to let thousands more civilians leave and then unconditionally surrender. The rebel-held enclave is coming under sustained pressure from the army. Aid agencies have expressed grave concern for the more than 200,000 civilians believed trapped in the area. The government has accused the rebels of preventing the non-combatants from leaving and using them as human shields. But the Tigers say the civilians are staying in the enclave because...

Tamil Tiger rebels have carried out a suicide attack on a naval base in the southern Sri Lankan tourist city of Galle. Eyewitnesses to the attack and the chaotic aftermath describe what they saw. RAMILA WALGAMAGE, REAL ESTATE BROKER At least two rebel boats exploded in the harbour When we heard the first blast, we didn't know what it was. We immediately ran to get a view of the harbour. We saw a few boats come into the harbour and explode. The boats we saw were high-speed boats and their explosions were sudden, unexpected and terrifying. There was a massive...

COLOMBO, Sri Lanka (AP) - Hundreds of Muslim families are fleeing their homes in eastern Sri Lanka amid fears of a Tamil Tiger rebel assault to reclaim territory taken by government forces in recent fighting, a local government leader said Saturday. The chairman of the government in the coastal town of Mutur, who goes by the single name Thoufeek, said 700 to 800 families - about 10 percent of the population - left on Friday and Saturday after the Tamil Tiger separatists warned that they were planning an offensive. Many of Mutur's residents, who are mostly Muslims, only returned to...

Sri Lanka's two decade civil war Aug 20 (Reuters) - Sri Lanka's government and Tamil Tiger rebels have now been locked for three weeks in the first ground fighting since a 2002 ceasefire. Below are some key dates in the island's two decade civil war, which has killed more than 65,000 people. 1948 - Ceylon gains independence from Britain, country is later renamed Sri Lanka. 1956 - Government makes majority language Sinhala the language of state. Minority Tamils say they feel marginalised. 1976 - As some Tamils take up arms against the state, militant Velupillai Prabhakaran forms the Liberation Tigers...

COLOMBO (Reuters) - Protesters calling for an end to recent violence in Sri Lanka found themselves brawling with hardline Buddhist monks on Thursday, after a rally dubbed a "peace protest" turned unexpectedly violent. Organisers said there were around 1,000 people in a park in the capital, Colombo, listening to a range of speakers when hardline saffron-robed monks opposed to concessions to Tamil Tiger rebels mounted the stage and erected banners. Some more moderate Buddhist monks, protesting for peace, were already on the stage when punches were thrown. Soon, monks' robes and fists were flying, although no one was badly hurt,...

SCORES died yesterday in the worst violence in Sri Lanka since a truce was declared in 2002. Tamil Tiger rebels said 61 schoolgirls were killed and up to 150 injured in an airforce bombing of an orphanage in rebel-held territory in the north-east. In a separate incident, a blast rocked the capital Colombo killing seven and injuring 17 after a Pakistani embassy convoy was hit by two Claymore mines. Pakistan's ambassador to Sri Lanka, Bashir Wali Mohamed, narrowly escaped when the convoy was hit. The Government blamed rebels for the unprecedented attack on a diplomat. "We condemn this terrorist attack...

MULLAITIVU, Sri Lanka - This town is no stranger to carnage, always bouncing back from the damages suffered during its periodic turns on the front lines of Sri Lanka's two-decade civil war. A government assault drove out ethnic Tamil rebels in 1990. After six years of siege, the guerrillas took it back in a ferocious, one-day battle that wiped out the army garrison of 1,200 and killed 800 rebels. The Tamils rebuilt, and the rebels' secretive chief, Vellupillai Prabhakaran, even made the town his home. But Mullaitivu met its match in Asia's tsunami catastrophe. Sitting on Sri Lanka's northeast coast,...

COLOMBO - The leader of Tamil Tiger rebels yesterday threatened to secede and form an independent state in the country's north-east if Sri Lanka's government continued to oppress the Tamil minority. Vellupillai Prabhakaran said he was still open to negotiating a settlement of the civil war that has killed 65,000 people in two decades, but warned that a power struggle between Sri Lanka's President and Prime Minister was destabilising the state and threatening the peace process. Prabhakaran, wearing the Tigers' combat uniform, denied that the rebels were rearming but said if the government continued to oppress Tamils and deny them...

COLOMBO: Sri Lanka's Tamil Tiger separatist rebels -- taking advantage of their cease-fire with the Sri Lankan government -- have taken to the game of cricket, winning their first match in a grand style, a news report said. A team of former guerrillas from the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) scored 250 runs in the allotted 20 overs, or 12.5 runs an over, and bowled out their opponents, a local team, for 14 runs, the Tamil Guardian newspaper reported in its latest edition, received in Colombo on Wednesday. The newspaper called it a friendly match, meaning it was not...