The Sri Lankan army has denied it has closed any military camps and maintained that it remained “on alert to face any eventualities”, in a statement released on Sunday.

The statement challenged critics of the military “to publicly name what those operationally important camps, said to have been closed down, if any.”

The forest department of Sri Lanka has demanded that recently resettled Tamil villagers in Vavuniya vacate their lands, as the government looks to occupy more regions in the North-East.

Approximately 35 families from Kanchiramoddai village in the Vanuniya North divisional secretariat recently resettled in the area, with some of the families having returned from India. However, the forest department has since demanded the villagers leave the area, claiming that the land belongs to the government.

The Northern Provincial Council passed a resolution to intensify its efforts to stop Sinhalisation of the province.

Proposed by Mullaitivu representative T Ravikaran at the council’s 130th sitting on August 30, the council agreed to appoint a group of experts to document the extent of illegal Sinhalisation in the province and to step up pressure on the Sri Lankan government, as well as to focus on stopping specific illegal settlements.

Residents and local business people held a hartal on Friday to protest against the establishment of a bottle water factory in Batticaloa. 

The hartal follows a protest last month in Eravur, where residents expressed concern the factory would take excessive amounts of water from Batticaloa's local water supplies. 

Local council members, Eastern Provincial Council members and religious leaders had participated in the protest. 

Manipay police arrested a Tamil youth for alleged involvement in the Ava gang. 

Kumarasamy Nilojan, 23 and originally from Kokkuvil, was arrested on September 4. 

The police claim he is a significant figure within the gang, who they have been looking to arrest for six months.  

Canada's High Commissioner to Sri Lanka, David McKinnon met with the leader of the Tamil National Alliance (TNA), R Sampanthan on Saturday. 

During the discussion, Sampanthan stressed the need for a new constitution to the country as essential to political change. 

Sri Lanka's president, Maithiripala Sirisena on Saturday rejected any possibility of holding an early presidential election. 

Stating he was "not ready in any way", Sirisena told SLFP party supporters at a meeting in Nivitigala that "if the SLPP and UNP overestimated their political power that is a mistake".

"Whatever value given by themselves to their parties no one could form a government without the support of the SLFP," he was further quoted by the Daily Mirror as saying. 

Krishanthi Kumaraswamy, the Tamil schoolgirl raped and murdered by Sri Lankan soldiers in 1996, was remembered in her hometown of Chemmani on Friday.

Two people were arrested for possession of heroin in Jaffna on Thursday, Valvettithurai police said.

A 24-year-old and a 27-year-old were arrested and 282 milligrams of heroin was seized, according to the police, who said that further investigations were underway.

The Batticaloa Municipal Council paid tribute to the victims of the 1990 Sathurukondan massacre: 185 Tamil men, women and children that were rounded up and slaughtered by Sri Lankan soldiers with the help of Muslim Home Guards.