03 January 2009

Now they're at it again

CNN.com has an article about the resurgence of the Tamil Tigers:
Colombo has been hit by a second bomb blast in only 24 hours following the fall of the Tamil Tigers' capital to government troops. Two people were wounded and a store damaged in the Petard commercial district Saturday. A day earlier a suicide bomber on a motorcycle blew himself up outside an air force headquarters in Colombo, killing two air force police officers and a member of the bomb-disposal unit. Another thirty people were injured.
The attacks come after President Mahinda Rajapaksa urged the Tigers to lay down their arms and end a quarter-century of civil war. He made his call after government troops retook the separatists' capital, Kilinochchi. In a televised statement Friday evening, Rajapaksa called the recapture of Kilinochchi "a victory against separatism." "The time is not far off when people of the north can breathe freedom again," Rajapaksa said. He invited the Tigers, who have fought for an independent homeland for Sri Lanka's ethnic Tamil minority since 1983, to surrender as government troops closed in on their last remaining strongholds.
The Tamil Tigers ran a parallel administration from Kilinochchi with their own police force, courts, prisons, and taxes, and they had declared government plans to retake the city a "daydream". But after Sri Lanka launched a new offensive against the rebels in the fall, the insurgents moved their nerve center and logistics bases to Mullaitivu, on the northeastern coast. Sri Lankan troops have been on the outskirts of Kilinochchi, about 580 km north of Colombo, for more than a month. They took a key highway junction and a town outside the city Thursday.
The civil war has left more than 65,000 people dead. The US State Department has designated the Tamil Tigers a terrorist organization.
Petard commercial district? Rico says it sounds more like the Retard district... But this is another one of those drive-them-into-the-sea situations, just like Gaza.

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