Injury-hit South Africa were on Monday boosted by the news that veteran all-rounder Shaun Pollock will arrive in Sri Lanka later this week following the birth of his second child. The 33-year-old will reach Colombo on Thursday, missing the first of the two Test matches which starts at the Sinhalese sports club.
South Africa’s first black cricket captain Ashwell Prince says his team is not worried about playing in violence-wracked Sri Lanka on the current tour. ”Prior to the tour, a team of security experts visited Sri Lanka and submitted their observations,” Prince told a media conference in Colombo late on Thursday.
South Africa, led by their first non-white captain Ashwell Prince, arrived in Sri Lanka on Wednesday to play two Tests and a one-day series also featuring India. The Proteas are depleted by the absence of regular captain Graeme Smith and star all-rounder Jacques Kallis, both of whom are injured.
Sri Lanka’s navy rained mortar shells on Tamil rebel positions in the island’s restive east on Friday, after suspected snipers killed one sailor and injured another as sporadic attacks raise fears of renewed war. The Tamil Tiger rebels said none of their fighters were killed by the mortars, but said they clashed with an army unit in their territory in the eastern district of Batticaloa,
A bitter battle to control Sri Lanka’s cricket establishment has wrecked the schedule for next month’s limited-overs tri-series against India and South Africa. The dispute, generated by upcoming elections at Sri Lanka Cricket (SLC), revolves around holding the first four matches of the August 14-29 tri-series in the central town of Dambulla.
Sri Lanka’s capital Colombo was thrown into panic on Friday after sonic booms caused by jet fighters were mistaken for bomb blasts off the coast, the military and police said. Defence Ministry spokesperson Prasad Samarasinghe said Israeli-built Kfir jets were on a training mission and may have broken the sound barrier causing people on the ground to hear loud blasts.
Sri Lanka’s president vowed on Friday not to allow the killing of 64 bus passengers derail the island’s peace process as the air force bombarded Tamil Tiger positions for a second straight day. President Mahinda Rajapakse insited the Norwegian-brokered process would not be allowed to collapse following Thursday’s Claymore mine attack on the bus.
Suspected Tamil Tiger rebels set off a powerful landmine in northern Sri Lanka on Thursday that killed at least 64 bus passengers and wounded another 45, a government minister said. The casualties were high as the bus was overcrowded with villagers travelling to the main town of Kebitigollewa to buy provisions.
Sri Lanka’s Tamil Tiger rebels denied involvement in Thursday’s bus bombing that killed at least 64 passengers and said the blast had been aimed at discrediting them. The Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam rejected government charges that they carried out the morning attack near Kebitigollewa town in the North-Central Province and in turn pointed a finger at the government.
Sri Lanka’s key foreign aid donors will meet to reevaluate the troubled nation’s faltering peace process this week at a meeting in Tokyo as blood continues to be spilt in the south Asian nation. Japan’s peace envoy Yasushi Akashi is to host a meeting of the United States, the European Union and Norway in order to review their involvement in Sri Lanka’s faltering peace process.
Mine attacks killed two navy sailors and wounded two commandos in northern Sri Lanka on Thursday in the latest in a barrage of violence that is posing the biggest danger yet to the country’s four-year-old ceasefire. The bloodshed threatens to wreck a 2002 truce that ended two decades of fighting between the government and rebels.
Sri Lanka’s air force resumed retaliatory strikes against Tamil Tiger positions on Wednesday, police said amid fears that the country was sliding back to full-scale war after a four-year truce. Air attacks were carried out in the north-eastern district of Trincomalee where the military bombed a cluster of boats of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam on Tuesday night.
At least eight people were killed in two separate mine blasts in northern Sri Lanka on Monday, hours after Tiger rebels announced they are suspending participation in peace talks. The latest deaths raised to 64 the number of people, mostly police or troops, killed in bomb attacks in the past week in the latest surge of violence linked to the decades-old Tamil separatist conflict.
Two policemen died in a suspected Tamil Tiger mine attack in Sri Lanka on Wednesday, the third in as many days, raising to 21 the number of people killed in the latest wave of bombings, police said. The policemen were on their way to Trincomalee to buy provisions for colleagues stationed further north of the main city in the eastern coastal district when they were ambushed.
Sri Lanka’s cricket authorities are hopeful the tsunami-hit Galle International Stadium will be ready to host a Test match against South Africa in August. ”We have received a clearance from the government to rebuild the stadium,” said K Mathivanan, a member of Sri Lanka Cricket’s interim committee.
The Sri Lankan cricket board on Friday gave ace off-spinner Muttiah Muralitharan a car for becoming the first bowler to claim 1Â 000 wickets in international cricket. A host of dignitaries, past and present Sri Lankan players and the entire Pakistan team attended a function organised by Sri Lanka Cricket on Thursday to honour the prolific bowler.
Mohammad Yousuf scored a stylish half-century on Wednesday to propel Pakistan to a comfortable four-wicket win against Sri Lanka in the third limited-overs international and a series sweep. Yousuf backed up Shahid Afridi’s haul of 3-37, and knocks of 46 runs each by opening batsmen Shoaib Malik and Imran Farhat.
Sri Lanka on Tuesday accused Tamil Tiger rebels of conscripting more child soldiers despite pledges to end the internationally-condemned practice of enlisting underage combatants. The defence ministry in a statement accused the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam of abducting two schoolboys in the restive eastern district of Batticaloa on Monday.
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/ 27 January 2006
Sri Lanka’s key foreign backers welcomed on Friday an agreement by the Sri Lankan government and Tamil Tiger rebels to resume peace talks and urged them to work to halt violence. Japan praised Norway for breaking on Wednesday a three-year deadlock in the peace process by clinching a deal for the warring parties to meet face-to-face in Geneva by mid-February.
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/ 24 January 2006
Sri Lanka’s president on Tuesday asked Norway to arrange early talks with Tamil Tiger rebels and help stem the latest wave of violence that has killed at least 151 people. President Mahinda Rajapakse held closed-door talks with Norway’s top peace envoy, Erik Solheim, on salvaging the island’s Oslo-backed peace process, which has remained deadlocked since April 2003.
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/ 17 January 2006
Suspected Tiger rebels set off two more mines and fought a gun battle with troops on Tuesday as the United Nations urged talks and Norway made a fresh bid to pull Sri Lanka back from the brink of war. Military officials said members of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam ambushed a navy bus by setting off a landmine in the restive northeast port district of Trincomalee.
Suspected Tamil rebels blew up a naval gunboat on Saturday, killing 15 Sri Lankan sailors in a suicide attack that caused the biggest military loss of life since a truce began four years ago, the military said. The pre-dawn attack came as the United States expressed concern over the recent escalation of violence in Sri Lanka.
Stung by consecutive defeats, the Sri Lankan cricket board is sending renowned sports psychologist Sandy Gordon to help the national cricket team come out of its present poor form, a top cricket official said. Sri Lanka has lost eight of its last nine limited-overs internationals to India and New Zealand over the past two months.
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/ 5 December 2005
Sri Lankan troops and police stepped up security on Monday following a spate of attacks blamed on the Tamil Tigers that killed 12 people over the weekend, a military official said. Troops in the island’s embattled northern and eastern regions as well as other parts of the island were asked to maintain a high state of alert, the official said.
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/ 14 November 2005
Sri Lanka’s presidential election this week has turned into a vote on the country’s distressed economy and the troubled peace process, with the two main contenders diverging sharply on the major issues. About 13,3-million eligible voters will effectively be choosing on Thursday between the current and former prime ministers, who have radically different views on how to save the nation from economic and ethnic implosion.
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/ 26 October 2005
Sri Lanka’s media on Wednesday attributed their cricket team’s massive 152-run loss in the first limited-overs match against India to ”fireworks” from master batsman Sachin Tendulkar and Irfan Pathan, calling the former skipper’s performance ”Sachin’s magic”.
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/ 13 October 2005
Tamil Tiger rebels on Thursday asked peace broker Norway to help end the deadlock in Sri Lanka’s peace process amid a renewed outbreak of internecine clashes. Norway’s special peace envoy Trond Furuhovde met with the political wing leader of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam, SP Thamilselvan, in a bid to lift the impasse in the troubled peace process.
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/ 26 September 2005
Sri Lankan election chief Dayananda Dissanayake will be running November presidential elections but won’t be voting — he doesn’t trust politicians. Dissanayake (64) wants to retire, but a constitutional quirk is forcing him, against his will, to lead a team of 100 000 officials in staging the November 17 vote.
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/ 23 September 2005
Sri Lanka has announced measures to prevent voters impersonating the tsunami dead as well as special arrangements for those displaced by the calamity to vote in November’s presidential elections. Elections’ Commissioner Dayananda Dissanayake said polling cards would be sent out to those believed to have perished in the tsunami but these will be marked to indicate the voter is dead.
Sri Lanka’s slain minister of foreign affairs Lakshman Kadirgamar, a Tamil himself, was a fierce foe of Tamil Tiger rebels. Snipers gunned down Kadirgamar, whom the rebels dubbed a traitor to their cause of seeking a separate homeland, at his home late on Friday.
Gloom over Sri Lanka’s stagnant peace process intensified on Sunday as hundreds of troops and police manned hurriedly erected checkpoints throughout Colombo in the wake of the assassination of the foreign minister, Lakshman Kadirgamar.
Sri Lanka’s Minister of Foreign Affairs, Lakshman Kadirgamar, was assassinated on Friday night by unidentified snipers in the capital, the military and hospital sources said. Kadirgamar (73) was hit by several bullets in the head and chest as he returned to his tightly guarded private residence in Colombo.