President Mahinda Rajapaksa of Sri Lanka has called for people in the north of the island to sink their political differences and rebuild the region. He was speaking after chairing an unprecedented cabinet meeting in the town of Kilinochchi, which was the headquarters of the separatist Tamil Tigers until just before their military defeat last year. The government has confirmed that northern Sri Lanka will now host permanent military garrisons. [ Full Report ]

    Health Minister Maithripala Sirisena yesterday said the government had decided not only to decentralize the government’s administration system but also the cabinet activities. He said the first ever cabinet meeting would be held in Kilinochchi on July 14. The government’s attention has also been drawn towards holding cabinet meetings in other districts as well, he added. “This has been possible under the prevailing peaceful situation in the country. Another plus factor is that the attention of ministers and officials will be drawn to the districts where cabinet meetings are held,” Minister Sirisena said. [ Full Report ]

    The recent death of a French de-miner in northern Sri Lanka highlights the ongoing threat of landmines in preventing the safe return of tens of thousands of conflict-displaced. Dominique Morin, who worked for the Swiss Foundation for Mine Action, was killed on 10 May when a device he was handling exploded in the village of Kakkayankulam West, in eastern Mannar District. “The risk is still there. We need to do more,” Nigel Robinson, country programme manager for the NGO told IRIN on 28 May in Colombo. [ Full Report ]

    The northern Sri Lankan town of Kilinochchi – former capital of the defeated Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) – is struggling to address the needs of thousands of returnees. According to Sri Lankan military officials, more than 24,000 people or close to 30 percent of the town’s original population have returned since December – many of whom are living in tents. But 10 months since the government declared final victory over the LTTE in May 2009, Kilinochchi is grappling with an influx of returnees. Thousands of residents fled the city en masse in the conflict’s final days, only to find themselves in displaced people’s camps in the town of Vavuniya or elsewhere. [ Full Report ]

    It will take one-and-a-half to two years to do away with most land mines and another year to declare the areas safe for habitation, reported Times of India, Sunday, citing Indian Army’s retired Major General Prem K. Puri who is heading one of the Indian outfits engaged in de-mining the North and East. Meanwhile, 82 more former Indian soldiers have gone to Sri Lanka last week to join the hundreds or perhaps thousands already operating under the care of Colombo’s National Steering Committee. Mahinda Rajapaksa’s insistence on ‘de-mining first’ to free civilians from the concentration camps and India sitting on international intervention raise serious concern in Tamil circles, how long both the Establishments are going to continue the ‘human shield’ in fulfilling their agenda. [ Full Report ]

    A maroon shirt still draped over a railing, houses with doors half open, their roofs bombed away, the walls streaked with bullet marks; cattle left behind by fleeing owners graze in green fields dotted with hidden landmines; empty street after empty street and a lot of silence. This is Kilinochchi today, half an hour from the current Lankan battlefront. Once a bustling town and the de facto capital of the LTTE empire, since its fall in January this year it’s the symbol of triumph of the Sri Lankan Army’s military campaign against the Tamil Tigers and also the tragic story of the Tamil people, whose lives have been shattered in a never-ending struggle for dignity that eventually turned into a bitter and violent ethnic conflict. [ Full Report ]

    Mr. K. Mylwaganam,who had been contributing many articles to Sangam.org during the last few years, with the very latest on August 28, 2008, passed away in his sleep in Puthukudiyirruppu hospital on 24-01-2009 all alone. He leaves behind his wife, sons and daughters far away from home. Our sympathies to them. Maybe, his heart could not take it anymore, the sufferings all around him in that hospital and outside. Myl brought to us, his age group and everyone else, the nearness of our dear soil through his articles in Sangam.org. [ Full Report ]

    Media Minister Lakshman Yapa Abeywardene said yesterday that the development of the recently librated Kilinochchi would begin soon with the assistance of India. He said the government would also seek the assistance of other countries to develop Kilinochchi. Mr. Abeywardene told a news conference that preliminary discussions had taken place on Monday between Senior Presidential Advisor Basil Rajapaksa and Indian High Commissioner Alok Prasad on the development of Kilinochchi and the North. [ Full Report ]

    Democratic People’s Front (DPF) Leader and Colombo District Member of Parliament Mano Ganesan observes that the fall of Kilinochchi is not the end of the political war that successive governments have been waging since independence. Admitting that the fall was a military success, the MP said one cannot get carried away by military victories. He said that the entire nation could celebrate only when a concrete solution was found to the national question. “The stumbling block to a political solution is the lack of statesmanship at the national level,” he told The Nation in an interview. [ Full Report ]

    Ranjani Kandiah of Markham, Ont., got a phone call from her brother last weekend telling her the news she had dreaded: an artillery shell had hit her parents' house in northern Sri Lanka. She went to her computer and, on a pro-rebel Web site, found photos of her mother lying on a stretcher and her 66-year-old father with bandages on his chest and left wrist. "She heard the news, she started to cry," her husband, Sekar Kandiah, who works for the auto-parts company Magna International Inc., said yesterday in an interview at their home in a snowy subdivision north of Toronto. [ Full Report ]

    Sri Lanka's cabinet reinstituted on Wednesday a ban on the Tamil Tiger rebels which designates them as a terrorist group, Sri Lanka's defence spokesman said. "The cabinet has decided to ban the LTTE as they are not allowing civilians to leave the war zone," defence spokesman Keheliya Rambukwella, also a minister, told a press conference. The ban against the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) was lifted in 2002 at the start of an ill-fated six-year truce. [ Full Report ]

    KilLinochchi has fallen and there is great rejoicing. It is worth, however, to remind ourselves that the war still goes on, that there are three hundred thousand IDPs still in the Wanni and that the APRC is still in labour, with no sight or sound of imminent delivery. The significance of the fall of Killinochchi cannot be minimised by reference to the fact that it has changed hands before and that it came into prominence as the politico-administrative capital of the LTTE quasi-state only because Jaffna was denied to the LTTE. This is a political struggle as some of us do not tire of opining and as such, the loss is a blow to LTTE pretensions. [ Full Report ]

    It was a prestigious and popular victory for the security forces and the government with the fire crackers other celebrations giving a bigger bang than the New Year’s Eve balls or fireworks... The question now is: after Kilinochchi what? Government and military spokesman say the next target would be Elephant Pass and finally the showdown in Mullaitivu. Some defence analysts believe a big question mark hangs over whether it will be Mullaitivu or mayhem. The response of the international community is also a cause for concern. The United States, Japan and India are among the countries which have said they are not impressed with such military victories and want a political package which now looks more like some lost baggage that might not be found. [ Full Report ]

    Many Sri Lankan Tamils living in Tamil Nadu expressed disappointment on the fall of Tamil Tigers' de facto capital Kilinochchi but confident that Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) would bounce back. Around one thousand of refugees from Sri Lanka are saying in the several places in Tamil Nadu. Kottapatu is one such camp in Thiruchirappali district of the state where thousands of Sri Lankan Tamils are staying. The worst sufferers in the war are the locals. The situation does not even permit the sufferers to even come here as refugees and also there is a threat to their lives. So it is very unfortunate, said Eshwaran, a refugee. [ Full Report ]

    Sri-Lankan government was overenthusiastic when they captured Kilinochchi on 2 January. Capturing a place even it is the headquarters of an opponent is not winning a war. May be the government won a little battle. Tigers had neither surrendered, nor been killed nor been captured. Therefore they will strike back as they had done before on many an occasion. Many political observers urge the Sri-Lankan government to settle the Tamil’s issue through dialogue. Tamils in Sri-Lanka who democratically opting for self rule in their Traditional Homeland of North and East (TH) called Eelam are being herded by bomb throwing Sri-Lankan Kifir bombers under trees and makeshift camps and butchered like the Jews in Hitlerite Auschwitz (Poland) camp like pigs with multi-barrels guns. [ Full Report ]

    The loss of Kilinochchi, its capital, is a major blow to the Tamil Tiger movement fighting for autonomy in the Sinhalese-dominated country. But the army's success in capturing the town yesterday does not mark the death of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE). Kilinochchi was the LTTE's political headquarters, strung out on the main tarmac road from Colombo to Jaffna. The government could always strike it at will by air, as it did just over a year ago when aircraft bombed the offices of SP Thamilselvan, the man with whom foreign diplomats as well as the government had frequently negotiated. [ Full Report ]

    The Sri Lankan army today seized control of Kilinochchi, the low-lying northern town in which separatist Tamil Tiger rebels had put together the institutions of their long sought-after independent state. The major symbolic victory for the government could also prove a decisive turning point in the country's 25-year civil war. "This was an unparalleled victory," the president, Mahinda Rajapakse, said in a televised speech from his office. [ Full Report ]

    Sri Lankan soldiers fought their way into the Tamil Tiger rebel capital Friday for the first time in a decade, military officials said, following months of fierce battles on the outskirts that left scores dead. Troops entered the northern town of Kilinochchi from two sides, senior military officials told The Associated Press on condition of anonymity in line with government rules. The level of fighting inside the town remained unclear. The military had predicted Thursday that soldiers would seize the town within two days. [ Full Report ]

    Tamil Tiger rebels are putting up stiff resistance as government troops close on their political capital in Sri Lanka's war-torn north, the defence ministry said Monday.On Sunday, the ministry said troops were within "kissing distance" of Kilinochchi, the political headquarters of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE).The government has been saying that the fall of Kilinochchi was imminent since September, but intense rebel resistance and monsoon rains have slowed the military push. The ministry did not give details of its casualties, while there was no comment from the guerrillas. There were no independent accounts of the fighting. [ Full Report ]

    Sri Lanka says there have been heavy clashes between its forces and the Tamil Tigers in a battle to take the key rebel stronghold of Kilinochchi. The defence ministry says the latest fighting began before dawn, with the Tamil Tigers launching a counter-attack on troops. But the military says it drove them off with artillery and rocket launchers, and inflicted heavy casualties. The Tigers have not commented and there are no independent accounts. On Friday, Sri Lanka's military said it had entered the north-eastern town of Alampil, used as a naval base by the Tigers. [ Full Report ]

    Sri Lankan government forces on Monday wrested control over another town from Tamil Tiger rebels in their offensive to capture the political capital of the guerrillas, the defence ministry said. Troops took the town of Kokavil, about 12 kilometres (7.5 miles) south of the Tigers' political headquarters of Kilinochchi, early on Monday, the ministry said in a statement. "This is the first time after 28 years that the army has gained full control over this area (of Kokavil)," the statement said. [ Full Report ]

    As the Sri Lankan government closes in on the last strongholds of Tamil Tiger rebels, it has declared itself confident of ending the country's bitter 25-year civil war. After capturing key strategic west coast areas from the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) - who are demanding an independent state for ethnic Tamils in the north and east of the island - the government now says the fall of the rebels' de facto capital Kilinochi is imminent. [ Full Report ]

    Close to 55,000 school children from 190 schools have displaced in Vanni since 2006. Most of the displaced schools have combined with the schools that have not displaced and are functioning. Some are operating two sessions each session with reduced hours. Few schools have stopped functioning after displacement. Many of the IDP children are still living under tarpaulins in muddy areas. [ Full Report ]

    Government forces and Tamil Tiger separatists fought pitched battles in the rain and mud in a ring of villages outside the rebel administrative capital in northern Sri Lanka, the military said Tuesday. "Heavy clashes" broke out throughout the day Monday in the village of Pallawarayankatu near rebel headquarters in Kilinochchi, the military said in a statement. Separate fighting erupted in the villages of Akkrayankulam and Kokkavil. [ Full Report ]

    Sri Lankan troops are facing stiff resistance from Tamil Tiger rebels and heavy monsoon rains in their offensive to seize the rebels' de facto capital in the north, the Defense Ministry said Thursday. Heavy clashes broke out Wednesday in Akkarayankulam village, west of the rebel headquarters of Kilinochchi, in which soldiers managed to capture several rebel trenches and bunkers despite the pounding rains, the ministry said in a statement. It did not give casualty details. [ Full Report ]