The International community reacted with alarm to the latest fighting in Sri Lanka, and delegates from three countries are expected to visit this week to discuss the renewed outbreaks in the conflict.
The arrest of a Tamil youth, Poobalapillai Kantharajah, 26, from Batticaloa, on September 29, shed light on an abduction and extortion racket that has plagued the eastern city for some time.
Amid an intensifying civil war, the Sri Lankan defence authorities have set out tough new guidelines for the media, which amount to de facto censorship of reporting on military activities.
The bodies of 15 Action Internationale Contre la Faim (ACF) aid workers killed in Muttur in August are to be exhumed as part of the investigations into the massacre. Two of the 17 aid workers killed in August have already been exhumed and are being kept in Colombo awaiting examination.
A five-member International Mission on Press Freedom visited Colombo from October 9 to 11 at the invitation of leading media institutions and organizations in the country.
Internally displaced civilians from 23 villages from Muthur East, SLA controlled areas south of Muthur, and 20 villages from Eachilampattu, Veruhal area, have sought refuge in Vaharai area, rendering the area densely populated with 61,000 civilians.
The LTTE claimed last Saturday (October 7) that it had blunted a Sri Lankan offensive in Vaharai, on the border between Trincomalee and Batticaloa districts in Eastern Sri Lanka.
Sri Lanka's Supreme Court on Monday declared the merger of the northern and eastern provinces, effected in 1987 as part of the Indo-Sri Lanka Accord, "null and void and illegal."
The move defied explicit calls by international backers of the Norwegian peace process, including India, for Sri Lanka to refrain from moves which would inflame tensions and undermine a negotiated settlement.
Escalating violence in Sri Lanka is casting doubts on whether the talks scheduled to take place in Geneva later this month between the hardline government of President Mahinda Rajapakse and the Liberation
The Karuna Group has abducted hundreds of men and boys - some as young as 12 - and is training them for combat in camps operated with the government's consent.
A major military action in the battlefields of Muhamalai by the Sri Lanka Army (SLA) last Wednesday morning turned out to be its worst reversal during the four-year ceasefire.
