Colombo - Three doctors who provided information to the media during the height of the military operations against Tamil separatist rebels in northern Sri Lanka were being questioned by police before being charged in the courts, a police spokesman said.

Colombo - The Sri Lanka navy Thursday detained a vessel reported to be carrying relief aid from Britain for displaced persons in the northern part of the country, a military spokesman said.

The vessel, Captain Ali, was placed under custody some 150 kilometres west of the capital Colombo and is currently being guided under the escort of Navy warships to the harbour in the capital for further investigations, the spokesman said.

Colombo - Sri Lanka is holding a national victory parade Wednesday to mark the crushing of the Tamil rebels of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) as part of continuing celebrations, officials said.

A military parade in which all senior officers and some of the soldiers who took part in operations will be held in a ceremony attended by President Mahinda Rajapaksa at the Galle Face Green, a sea front ground in Colombo, Wednesday morning.

Colombo- A journalist and media activist abducted and assaulted in Sri Lanka's capital said Tuesday he was warned not to get involved in any more protests related media freedom.

The journalist, Poddala Jayantha, was recovering at the national hospital in Colombo after being beaten up overnight Monday by unknown abductors.

He told journalists that the main motive for the abduction appeared to be to threaten him and keep him away from media rights activities.

Colombo - Brushing aside sweeping allegations of widespread killings of civilians in the final stage of their campaign to crush Tamil rebels, Sri Lankan officials said Monday they will press ahead with plans to care for thousands of war refugees who will eventually be sent back to their homes.

Colombo made no official response to allegations by British newspapers and human rights organizations of human rights abuses in the final days of the conflict.

Colombo, May 30 : The Government of Sri Lanka has denounced a report by The Times of London on Friday that said "more than 20,000 Tamil civilians were killed in the final throes of the Sri Lankan civil war, most as a result of government shelling."

The English newspaper's estimate was based on an analysis of "aerial photographs, official documents, witness accounts and expert testimony," relied in part on an anonymous United Nations source and what the paper called "confidential United Nations documents."

Colombo - DNA tests carried out on the bodies believed to be of Tamil rebel leader Velupillai Prabhakaran and his son have matched, a military spokesman said Thursday.

Army medical experts carried out the tests on the bodies of the two men killed last week in north-eastern Sri Lanka, Brigadier Udaya Nanayakkara said.

They died as the government wrapped up its military offensive against the separatist Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) and announced it had defeated the guerillas after a more than 25-year conflict.

Colombo - Sri Lanka, reacting to the UN Human Rights Council adopting a resolution in Geneva commending the government for its commitment to human rights, hailed countries supporting the motion.

Human Rights Minister Mahinda Samarasinghe, speaking on state-run television, said the resolution adopted Wednesday with a comprehensive majority was a strength to the country.

Colombo  - A week after the Sri Lankan government declared the Tamil rebels crushed, army commandos killed 11 rebels in the eastern part of the country and recovered a haul of weapons, the army said Wednesday.

The rebels were killed in the Kanjikudichchiaru area, 320 kilometres south-east of the capital in the Ampara district, an area that had been declared cleared by security forces.

Colombo - As many as 10,000 Tamil rebels have surrendered to the Sri Lankan government in the northern part of the country. Most of them are due to undergo rehabilitation, a state run newspaper reported Sunday.

The government has already started rehabilitation programmes for more than 7,200 members of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) who surrendered before the fighting was officially declared over last Tuesday, the Sunday Observer in Colombo reported.

Colombo, May 24 : The Government of Sri Lanka on Sunday said that it would allow UN aid workers access to Tamil refugees housed in camps after weeding out elements suspected of links with the LTTE.

Responding to UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon’s demand for unhindered access after visiting the Menik Farm camp housing 200,000 Tamils, Sri Lanka President Mahinda Rajapaksa warned of "the likely presence of Tamil Tiger infiltrators among the large numbers who had come to the government areas."

The government describes the camps as "welfare villages" and says it wants to resettle all displaced civilians as soon as possible.

Colombo, May 24 : They squat in a circle, grinding their tiny hands nervously into the mud behind the six foot high barbed wire fence that imprisons them. And their little eyes stare wide open in fear at what lies on the other side. This is the Pulmoddai refugee camp in war-torn northern Sri Lanka, where soldiers sit, each one ten yards apart, their AK47 assault rifles trained at the 6,000 terrified refugees huddled inside.

This, according to the News of The World, is the terrifying aftermath of Asia''s longest civil war.

Colombo, May 22: The Sri Lankan military spokesperson Brigadier Udaya Nanyakkara said that LTTE Supremo Prabhakaran's body was cremated in Mullaithivu on Wednesday.

According to the military, his body was treated like any other terrorist.

Earlier, Sri Lankan Army sources had revealed that the Government was planning to bury Prabhakaran in an unmarked mass grave.

They said that the mass burial was being undertaken to prevent any sort of hero worship or memorial being built in the honour of Prabhakaran.

Colombo, May 22: A report by the Save the Children charity has suggested that a fifth of all children were either missing or separated from one or both of their parents in northern Sri Lanka.

The charity said that while the Sri Lankan government had taken some measures to reunite such families, the situation remained dire.

Colombo - UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon is to offer further assistance to people displaced by Sri Lanka's war, a senior UN official in Colombo said Friday as the government for the first time released updated military casualty figures.

Defence Secretary Gotabaya Rajapaksa for the first time released details of military casualties in the final phase of the operations against Tamil rebels.

Colombo, May 22 : A former Tamil Tiger leader who defected to become a Sri Lankan government minister has officially admitted that a significant numbers of civilians were killed during the final offensive against the rebels.

Vinayagamoorthy Muralitharan, alias Colonel Karuna, told The Telegraph that President Mahinda Rajapaksa had made a mistake when he claimed no one had died at the hands of the army.

Colombo - Indian National Security Advisor MK Narayanan and Foreign Secretary Shiva Shankar Menon Thursday laid out plans with Sri Lankan leaders for the early resettlement of an estimated 250,000 civilians displaced in the just-concluded civil war, the Presidential Office in Colombo said.

The visit to Sri Lanka by the two Indian officials was the first official-level visit from any country after the military ended against Tamil rebels and the government declared victory over the rebels on Tuesday.

Colombo, May 21 : India's National Security Advisor M. K. Narayanan and Foreign Secretary Shiv Shankar Menon on Thursday met Sri Lankan President Mahinda Rajapaksa and sought a political solution to the Tamil question.

Narayanan and Menon, who met Rajapaksa at a close door breakfast meeting at his Temple Trees residence here, offered India's help in the reconstruction effort following elimination of the LTTE.

Colombo, May 21 : Thousands of Tamil civilians who had been forced from their homes by the conflict in Sri Lanka could be interned in refugee camps for up to two years before they are permitted to return, authorities in Colombo have said.

The revelation comes as the International Committee for the Red Cross (ICRC) said that it has been forced to suspend its aid supply to the refugees after it was refused access to the camps, reports The Independent.

Colombo, May 21 : Children are reportedly being abducted from refugee camps in Sri Lanka, apparently with the tacit approval of the Rajapaksa government, human rights groups have claimed.

The Telegraph quoted The Coalition to Stop the Use of Child Soldiers as saying that it had received verified reports of child abductions from camps in the main resettlement area of Vavuniya, often by paramilitary Tamil groups.