Convoy attack kills 20

[TamilNet, Friday, 24 September 1999, 14:12 GMT]
Twenty Sri Lanka Army (SLA) soldiers were killed and 27 others wounded when the vehicle in which they were traveling was hit by a claymore mine blast around noon today in Batticaloa town. SLA soldiers fired indiscriminately, wounding two civilians, sources said.
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Communal tension before massacre - Bishop

[TamilNet, Friday, 24 September 1999, 10:34 GMT]
The anti- Tamil and Muslim propaganda conducted by the Sinhala Veera Vithane, a Sinhala extremist organisation in the Ampara district could have contributed to inflaming communal tensions ahead of the massacre of civilians in the border villages last weekend, the Bishop of Trincomalee and Batticaloa, Rt.Rev.Kingsley Swampillai said yesterday.
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Tamil Bishops urge peace talks

[TamilNet, Thursday, 23 September 1999, 13:27 GMT]
The Bishop of the Batticaloa-Trincomalee diocese Rt.Rev. Kingsley Swampillai who returned yesterday after a visit to the Vanni said that the Liberation Tigers denied reports that they were responsible for the massacre of Sinhala civilians in the Ampara district on September 18. The Bishops of the Tamil dioceses of Sri Lanka, Rt.Rev.Thomas Savundaranayagam (Jaffna), Rt.Rev.Rayappu Joseph (Mannar) and Rt.Rev. Swampillai (Batticaloa-Trincomalee) went to the Vanni on Monday Sept.20.
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Catholic leaders visit Vanni

[TamilNet, Wednesday, 22 September 1999, 11:56 GMT]
The Catholic Bishops of Jaffna, Mannar and Batticaloa who are visiting the Vanni region are planning to meet senior leaders of the Liberation Tigers to discuss the island's ongoing conflict, sources said.
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Amnesty condemns Amparai killings

[TamilNet, Monday, 20 September 1999, 21:24 GMT]
Amnesty International Monday condemned the killing of more than 50 Sinhalese civilians in a predawn raid on three villages in the Amparai district. In a statement issued today, Amnesty said the Liberation Tigers might have carried out the attack in retaliation for the deaths of 22 Tamil civilians at Puthukkudiyiruppu, Mullaitivu district, in a bombing raid by the Sri Lanka Air Force (SLAF) on 15 September.
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President's responses to tragedies raise questions

[TamilNet, Saturday, 18 September 1999, 18:09 GMT]
Tamil United Liberation Front MP Mr. Joseph Pararajasigham criticised the Sri Lankan President for racial discrimination in her reactions to the killing of Sinhalese in Ampara today for whom she offered compensation and funerals at state expense and to the deaths of Tamil civilians bombed by the Sri Lanka Air Force in Mullaithivu on Wednesday.
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ICRC alarmed at rising civilian casualties

[TamilNet, Saturday, 18 September 1999, 16:58 GMT]
The International Committee of the Red Cross ( ICRC) in Geneva issued today a press release expressing deep concern at the recent outburst of violence in the conflict in Sri Lanka.
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President orders compensation

[TamilNet, Saturday, 18 September 1999, 11:51 GMT]
The Sri Lankan President announced this afternoon that the government will give compensation to the immediate relatives of the victims of today’s massacre in the Ampara district in which 51 villagers were killed. She expressed her condolences to the bereaved families.
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Gunmen kill 56 border villagers

[TamilNet, Saturday, 18 September 1999, 03:11 GMT]
More than 56 villagers were killed by gunmen who attacked three border villages in the Ampara district in southeastern Sri Lanka in the early hours of the morning today. Houses were also set on fire by the attackers, Police sources in Ampara said.
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Amnesty questions Puthukkudiyiruppu bombing raid

[TamilNet, Friday, 17 September 1999, 10:39 GMT]
Amnesty International said today that the explanation proffered by the Sri Lanka Air Force (SLAF) for the bombing of the Puthukkudiyiruppu market on Wednesday "does not absolve it from its responsibility under international humanitarian law to take all possible precautions to avoid harming civilians"
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More skeletons unearthed

[TamilNet, Thursday, 16 September 1999, 18:18 GMT]
Fourteen human skeletons have so far been dug up in the Chemmani area by investigators, according to officials in Jaffna. Three skeletons were found near the Kottukkinattady Pillaiyar temple today.
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Jets hit correct targets - military

[TamilNet, Thursday, 16 September 1999, 12:49 GMT]
Sri Lanka Army (SLA) spokesman, Brigadier Sunil Tennekoon, said at the weekly cabinet press briefing in Colombo this morning that Air Force jets had correctly hit their targets in Puthukkudiyiruppu on Wednesday. He was responding to questions from journalists about the bombing of a busy market place in northern Sri Lanka yesterday.
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Red Cross confirms Puthukkudiyiruppu massacre

[TamilNet, Thursday, 16 September 1999, 04:33 GMT]
A spokesman for the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) said that sixteen civilians were killed on the spot and six who were seriously wounded died in the hospital when Sri Lanka Air Force (SLAF) jets bombed a busy market place in the morning yesterday in northern Sri Lanka.
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21 civilians killed in SLAF attack

[TamilNet, Wednesday, 15 September 1999, 13:11 GMT]
(Adds names) More than twenty one civilians, including school children and women were killed and more than forty seriously wounded when two Kfir jets of the Sri Lanka Air Force bombed a crowded public place in Puthukkudiyiruppu in the Mullaithivu district this morning around 10 a.m.
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Four SLA soldiers wounded in ambush

[TamilNet, Monday, 13 September 1999, 06:36 GMT]
Four soldier were wounded when the Liberation Tigers attacked Sri Lanka Army (SLA) route clearing patrol at Puthuvelipaalam in Kaavathamunai, about 34 km. northwest of Batticaloa this morning around 8.30 a.m.
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Chemmani: Skeleton of woman found

[TamilNet, Saturday, 11 September 1999, 19:12 GMT]
A skeleton believed to be of a woman was found by the investigators at Chemmani mass grave site in the Jaffna peninsula today. The skeleton was found at a site behind a Sri Lanka Army (SLA) sentry near the Chemmani junction, identified by the key witness, ex-coporal Somaratna Rajapaksha.
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Jaffna APLMs mostly Chinese and Pakistan made

[TamilNet, Friday, 10 September 1999, 19:56 GMT]
Ninety nine percent of the anti-personnel land mines detected and removed by the UNDP so far in Jaffna were made in Pakistan and China said sources in the north today.
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Chaos follows mobile service

[TamilNet, Friday, 10 September 1999, 16:44 GMT]
The Northeastern Provincial Governor's mobile service in Batticaloa turned into a fiasco before it could start this morning in the eastern town government officials in the eastern town said.
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Police pocketing gains from forced labour?

[TamilNet, Friday, 10 September 1999, 01:09 GMT]
The people of an impoverished Tamil village on the island's east coast yesterday was forced to build a brick sentry point as a replacement for a thatched shelter which was burnt down on Monday, 6th of September, by unidentified persons suspected to be members of the Liberation Tigers, sources said.
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Intervention in East Timor urged

[TamilNet, Thursday, 09 September 1999, 23:01 GMT]
Tamil organizations in Australia and Britain today expressed solidarity with the people of East Timor and condemned the violence unleashed by pro-Indonesia militia after the East Timorese voted for independence from Indonesian rule. The Australian Federation of Tamil Associations (AFTA) and the London-based Tamil Information Centre (TIC) today issued press statements urging international intervention in the region.
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