W O R L D

LTTE capital falls to Lankan army
The Sri Lankan army took control of the northern town of Killinochchi on early Thursday, the so called administrative capital of the LTTE from where the Tigers ran a de facto state for nearly 10 years. President Mahinda Rajapaksa went on live television to address the nation to announce the military achievement and used the occasion to send out the “final message to the LTTE, to lay down their arms and surrender”.

Cuba’s President Raul Castro attends the 50th anniversary of the Cuban revolution in Santiago de Cuba on Thursday. — Reuters

Zardari: Dialogue can ease Indo-Pak tension
Pakistani President Asif Zardari said Indo-Pak tension should be resolved through dialogue. Zardari said Pakistan had repeatedly made offers of cooperation with India in Mumbai attacks investigation. However, India did not respond positively to Pakistan’s offer, he said while talking to US ambassador Anne W. Patterson who called on him at the Presidency on Friday.

Day 7: No ceasefire in sight
Gaza, January 2
There was no sign of a ceasefire on the seventh day of the conflict, in which at least 424 Palestinians have been killed and 2,000 wounded. Four Israelis, too, have died due to Palestinian rockets. Palestinian Islamists vowed revenge on Israel on Friday for killing a senior Hamas leader and his family, and said all options, including suicide bombs, were now open to “strike at Zionist interests everywhere”.

LTTE capital falls to Lankan army
Chandani Kirinde writes from Colombo

The Sri Lankan army took control of the northern town of Killinochchi on early Thursday, the so called administrative capital of the LTTE from where the Tigers ran a de facto state for nearly 10 years.

President Mahinda Rajapaksa went on live television to address the nation to announce the military achievement and used the occasion to send out the “final message to the LTTE, to lay down their arms and surrender”.

“What our heroic troops have achieved is not only the capture of the great fortress of the LTTE, but a major victory in the world's battle against terrorism. The entire world must today appreciate the outstanding success of the Sri Lankan troops,” the President said.

The fall of Killinochchi is of great symbolic importance as for many years the LTTE has maintained that government troops would never gain control of the area. From here the Tigers ran their own administration with LTTE police, a judicial system and also operated their peace secretariat.

Crackers were lit in capital Colombo as well as other areas as thousands of people took to the streets to celebrate the re-capture of the Killinochchi town.

But celebrations were shortlived as less than 20 minutes after the ceremony to mark the military victory concluded, a suspected LTTE suicide bomber blew himself up near the entrance to the Air Force complex in Colombo, killing two airmen and injuring at least 35 others.

Commander of the Sri Lanka Army, Lieutenant General Sarath Fonseka, who has led the main operations against the LTTE, said the fall of Elephant pass, the vital causeway that links the Jaffna peninsula with the main land, is likely within the next few days.

The Tigers, who he said now numbered between 1,700 and 1,900, have retreated into the last remaining area that they control, the thick jungles of Mullaithivu. The Commander vowed that the remaining LTTE members would be hunted down and eliminated by troops within the coming months.

Meanwhile, the pro-LTTE website said the army had entered a virtual ghost town as the whole civilian infrastructure as well as the centre of the LTTE had shifted further northeast.

The website quoted a source close to the LTTE as saying that the Tigers, who had put up heavy resistance so far, had kept their casualties as low as possible in the defensive fighting for Kilinochchi.

Zardari: Dialogue can ease Indo-Pak tension
Afzal Khan writes from Islamabad

Pakistani President Asif Zardari said Indo-Pak tension should be resolved through dialogue.

Zardari said Pakistan had repeatedly made offers of cooperation with India in Mumbai attacks investigation. However, India did not respond positively to Pakistan’s offer, he said while talking to US ambassador Anne W. Patterson who called on him at the Presidency on Friday.

An official press release by the Presidency quoted Anne Patterson as saying that her country was in constant contact with Indian and Pakistani leadership and it supported dialogue process so that tension between two South Asian neighbours could be diffused.

Matters relating to terrorism and regional situation were also discussed in the meeting. The US envoy was reported by a private TV channel Geo as lauding the steps taken by Pakistan to de-escalate Indo-Pak tension and said that cooperation with Pakistan in war against terror would be enhanced.

The President said the US should enhance cooperation with Pakistan in energy sector to address energy problems.

Meanwhile, foreign office spokesman Mohammad Sadiq has said Pakistan would not accept any political or military coercion from India and it was ready to defend itself.

“It will be unfortunate if a military confrontation takes place. A war or any level of military confrontation can have disastrous consequences for the region,” the spokesman said in an online briefing.

He said Pakistan would counsel restraint and demonstrate an attitude of responsibility.

Azhar not in Pak custody: Qureshi

Islamabad, January 2
Pakistan has not detained Jaish-e-Mohammed chief Maulana Masood Azhar, who is on India’s most wanted list, and authorities are not aware of his whereabouts, Foreign Minister Shah Mehmood Qureshi has said.

“Our stand from day one has been that some LeT leaders have been detained and that Azhar is not in our custody,” Qureshi said on the top Pakistani terrorist and founder of the JeM. “It is (our) effort that we will try to get to him but he is not in our custody. We do not know his whereabouts,” Qureshi told Geo TV.

Shortly after the Pakistani media reported last month that Azhar had been placed under a house arrest, Defence Minister Chaudhry Ahmed Mukhtar had told an Indian TV channel that the militant leader had been detained.

Azhar is on India’s most wanted list for his terror activities. India arrested him in 1994 and imprisoned him for being a member of the Harkat-ul-Mujahideen (HuM).

In December 1999, he was freed by the Indian government in exchange for passengers of the hijacked Indian Airlines Flight 814 (IC814). — PTI 

Day 7: No ceasefire in sight

Gaza, January 2
There was no sign of a ceasefire on the seventh day of the conflict, in which at least 424 Palestinians have been killed and 2,000 wounded. Four Israelis, too, have died due to Palestinian rockets.

Gaza violence uninterrupted Palestinian death toll reaches 424 Strike kills 3 children playing in street Hamas vows suicide attacks on "Zionists Protests turn violent in West Bank, Jordan

Palestinian Islamists vowed revenge on Israel on Friday for killing a senior Hamas leader and his family, and said all options, including suicide bombs, were now open to “strike at Zionist interests everywhere”.

Israel pressed on relentlessly with more than 30 air strikes, one of which killed three Palestinian children aged between eight and 12 as they played on a street near the town of Khan Yunis in the south of the Strip. One was decapitated.

“These injuries are not survivable injuries,” said Madth Gilbert, a Norwegian doctor at Gaza’s Shifa hospital, who could not save another boy who had both feet blown off. “This is a murder. This is a child,” he said.

Islamist fighters fired rockets at Israel's port of Ashkelon, one of which blew out windows in an apartment building. In Gaza city, a lucky few hundred foreign passport holders boarded buses in the pre-dawn murk to quit the Strip, with the help of the International Committee of the Red Cross, their governments and Israeli compliance.

They left behind 1.5 million Palestinians unable to escape the conflict, the city facing another day of bombs, missiles, flickering electricity, queues for bread, taped-up windows and streets littered with broken glass and debris.

"We will not rest until we destroy the Zionist entity," said Hamas leader Fathi Hammad at the funeral of Nizar Rayyan, who was killed along with four wives and 11 children by an Israeli missile that hit his house on Thursday. Spokesman Ismail Rudwan said that “following this crime, all options were now open, including martyrdom operations to deter the aggression and to strike Zionist interests everywhere”.

Meanwhile, while bracing for protests and retaliatory violence, Israel sealed off the occupied West Bank to deny entry to most Palestinians and beefed up security at checkpoints.

There were protests by Palestinians in major West Bank cities. In Ramallah, Hamas supporters scuffled with the Fatah faction of Western-backed Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, taunting them as "collaborators".

Elsewhere, protesters stoned soldiers at checkpoints and some were wounded by rubber bullets.

In the Jordanian capital, Amman, riot police fired teargas to disperse hundreds of protesters marching on the Israeli embassy, chanting: "No Jewish embassy on Arab land.” A statement from Gaza by Hamas spokesman Ismail Rudwan said Israel's "terrorism, massacre and holocaust will not break us and will not force us to raise a white flag... killing begets killing and destruction begets destruction”.

The death toll rose to 424 as some badly wounded succumbed to their injuries and a morning strike killed two Palestinians in a house Israel said concealed a tunnel and a weapons dump.A quarter of the dead were civilians, the UN estimates, and some 2,000 Palestinians have been wounded. — Reuters