Children can be more traumatized by the war than adults, but there are things we can do about it

The Sri Lankan government which is adamant that the local currency, Sri Lankan Rupee (LKR), will not be devalued continued spending large sums of its already dwindling foreign reserves trying to prop up the Rupee at its current levels against the US Dollar.

Sri Lanka’s foreign exchange reserves have fallen to little more than enough for six weeks of imports. And Japan, traditionally the island’s biggest donor, is cutting aid globally.

Three thousand Sri Lankan soldiers were killed fighting the Liberation Tigers in the past three months, the Sunday Island newspaper reported this week, quoting government Defence spokesman and Minister Keheliya Rambukwella.

Lasantha Wickrematunghe, editor-in-chief of The Sunday Leader, who was gunned down in an execution-style shooting on Thursday, January 8, writing from his grave pointed the finger at his killers. Three days after the killing, Wickrematunge's newspaper published a haunting, self-written obituary in which he says he was targeted for his writings and adds: "When finally I am killed, it will be the government that kills me."

Tens of thousands of people, on the run because of fighting between Sri Lankan government troops and the LTTE, have no safe passage, the Red Cross said Friday.

Indiscriminate fire by the Sri Lanka Army from all corners of a shrinking territory already overcrowded with civilians has worsened the humanitarian disaster unfolding in the Vanni.

The LTTE doesn't obstruct the civilians of Vanni or instruct them on what direction they have to take in fleeing the current phase of war, but people want to stay in LTTE areas for security reasons argues the head of a Vanni welfare organisation.

"There are no words to describe the plight of the civilians who say that they prefer to face death on the spot rather than succumbing to serious injuries or ending up in the hands of the invading Sri Lankan forces, which many of them regard as genocidal military and fear that their young men and women would be 'filtered' away, tortured or killed by it," reported a TamilNet correspondent from an outskirt of Puthukkudiyiruppu last Sunday evening amid artillery fire.

SLA commander Lt. Gen. Sarath Fonseka on Sunday January 18 said that as there were only a thousand Tamil Tigers left and they were “boxed” into a small jungle area in Mullaitivu, the war would soon be won.

The Sri Lankan government says it has formally outlawed the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam.

The Sri Lankan government took control of a private bank saddled with bad debt declaring that the action was required to ‘maintain the stability of the financial system’.

Describing several recent escalation in incidents where Sri Lanka Armed Forces have targetted Tamil civilian during festive days between Christmas and Thaipongal, TNA, in a press release said that the "stringent economic, food and medical embargos on the war affected areas, ... are not only War Crimes in contravention of the Geneva Conventions but are also a part of a policy of Genocide that the Sri Lankan State has been carrying out against the Tamil people."

Politicians and activists across Tamil Nadu have expressed their opinion that the Sri Lankan state is engaged in genocide against the Tamils on the island.