COLOMBO: Sri Lanka President Mahinda Rajapaksa declared a final victory in the country’s 26-year war against the Tamil Tiger rebels, using a speech before Parliament on Tuesday morning to declare that the country had triumphed over terrorism and pledged to resolve the ethnic conflict giving a call for national unity.Mr. Rajapaksa addressed Parliament a day after the government information service sent a text message to cell phones across the country saying that Vellupillai Prabhakaran, the elusive chief of the Tamil Tigers, had been killed. State television also broke into regular programming to announce the news.But a rebel spokesman on Tuesday denied the government’s claim, saying on a pro-rebel Web site that the “dear leader,” Mr. Prabhakaran, was “alive and safe.” “He will continue to lead the quest for dignity and freedom for the Tamil people,” said the spokesman, Selvarasa Pathmanathan. It was not possible to verify the conflicting claims because the government has barred independent journalists and human rights agencies from the battle areas for months. But the news of the end of the fighting provoked celebrations among the Sinhalese majority across the nation, with people taking to the streets of the capital here, singing, dancing and setting off firecrackers, although the heavy presence of soldiers at numerous checkpoints in the city center dampened the celebrations.“We have liberated the whole country from L.T.T.E. terrorism,” the president said before Parliament, referring to the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam, who had once controlled much of the country’s north and east.In his nationally televised speech, Mr. Rajapaksa emphasized the need for working toward unity. He reached out to the country’s marginalized Tamil minority by making brief remarks in the Tamil language. He said the war had not been waged against them but against the rebel group.“Our intention was to save the Tamil people from the cruel grip of the L.T.T.E.,” he said in the language of the Sinhalese majority. “We all must now live as equals in this free country.”The government’s military victory marked the end of Asia’s longest civil war, and of one of the world’s most enduring insurgencies. The rebels once controlled a quarter of Sri Lanka’s territory as they pressed their campaign for an independent homeland for the country’s Tamil minority.
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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