LONDON: More than 20,000 Tamil civilians were killed in the final days of Sri Lanka’s military operation to eliminate the Tamil Tigers, a British newspaper reported. Sri Lanka’s authorities say their forces stopped using heavy weapons on April 27 in a no-fire zone where an estimated 100,000 Tamil civilians were sheltered and blame civilian casualties on rebels hiding among the civilians, the London-based paper said. Citing confidential UN documents it acquired, the daily said the civilian death toll in the no-fire zone soared from late April, with around 1,000 civilians killed daily until May 19. That was the day after Vellupillai Prabhakaran, leader of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE), was killed. The final civilian death toll could be more than 20,000, said the paper. That figure is three times the official count. In fact, ‘‘higher’’, a UN source was quoted as saying by the paper. ‘‘Keep going.’’
Friday, August 14, 2009 MUMBAI: A 26-year-old woman died Thursday of H1N1 swine flu in the southern city of Bangalore, raising India's death toll from the virus to 20, authorities said.The death was the first reported in India's information technology capital, the Press Trust of India reported.Meanwhile in Pune, the worst-affected in India, two more victims of the virus died Thursday, raising the death toll in that western city near Mumbai to 12, the report said. The victims were an 11-month-old boy and a 75-year-old old woman.US media reported movie halls, schools and colleges were ordered closed Thursday for three days to a week in Mumbai, the commercial and financial capital of the country, as fear of the pandemic spread.Prajakata Lavangare, a spokeswoman for the government of Maharashtra state of which Mumbai is the capital, said similar orders were issued in Pune, which is also located in the state.The woman who died in Bangalore was identified only as Roopa, a teacher in...
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