Sri Lanka troops kill Tamil Tiger finance chief

[Coventina]

Source: Reuters

COLOMBO, March 12 (Reuters) - Sri Lankan troops killed the head of the Tamil Tigers' vast international financing network and 16 other fighters, and captured a hospital in the last town the separatist guerrillas hold, the military said on Thursday.

Sri Lanka's military has encircled the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) in a mere 37 sq km (15 sq miles) of the island nation's northeastern coast and is fighting to deal a death blow to a civil war that has raged off and on since 1983.

Army commanders say nearly all of the Tamil Tigers' top guerrillas including leader Vellupillai Prabhakaran are in that area, with some personally commanding the battles.

"Mortar fire killed the chief of the LTTE's financial wing yesterday," military spokesman Brigadier Udaya Nanayakkara said.


Read more: http://www.reuters.com/article/latestCrisis/idUSCOL467908

[ohio2007]

1. Caught on camera: The moment a suicide bomber blew himself up at a Sri Lankan mosque, killing 14

A Tamil Tiger suicide hit ?

This astonishing sequence of pictures shows the moment a suicide bomber blew himself up behind a crowd of people at a Sri Lankan mosque.
Fourteen people died in the blast.
While fighting rages in the north, the suicide attacker struck in the southern town of Akuressa as six ministers led a procession toward a mosque for a ceremony to commemorate the Prophet Muhammad's birthday.
Television footage showed men in white robes and caps slowly parading down the street before the blast sent them running in all directions.

snip

There was no indication Muslims were specifically targeted yesterday.

However, the Tamil Tigers used violence to drive many Muslims and ethnic Sinhalese, who are mainly Buddhist, from areas dominated by Tamils, who are mostly Hindu.
In one of the bloodiest incidents, suspected rebels attacked a mosque in an eastern town in 1990 with guns, grenades and machetes, killing 140 worshippers.

Muslims, many of them descendants of Arab or Indian traders, make up about 7 per cent of Sri Lanka's population. Many speak Tamil but the community has largely stayed out of the war.
With most communication to the north severed, rebel spokesmen could not be reached for comment.
The Tamil Tigers have fought since 1983 for an independent state for the Tamil minority, which suffered decades of marginalization at the hands of governments dominated by the Sinhalese majority.

More than 70,000 people have been killed.


http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/worldnews/article-1161220/Caught-camera-The-moment-suicide-bomber-blew-Sri-Lankan-mosque-killing-14.html

[Sultana]

2. Unfuckingbelievable

:o

So much for the religion of peace

[Posteritatis]

3. Tamils are mostly Hindu. Suicide bombing isn't an exclusively Muslim thing (nt)