DDMA Headline Animator

Sunday, May 17, 2009

Sri Lanka says all civilians out of war zone

By BHARATHA MALLWARACHI, Associated Press Writer

COLOMBO, Sri Lanka – The last remaining civilians trapped by fighting in northern Sri Lanka poured across the front lines Sunday as Tamil Tiger suicide bombers targeted troops in the final battles of the quarter-century civil war, the military said.

The tattered and nearly defeated rebel group offered to lay down its arms to protect the wounded in the war zone.

"This battle has reached its bitter end," rebel official Selvarasa Pathmanathan said in a statement. "It is our people who are dying now from bombs, shells, illness and hunger. We cannot permit any more harm to befall them. We remain with one last choice — to remove the last weak excuse of the enemy for killing our people. We have decided to silence our guns."

There was no immediate government response, but Sri Lankan officials have repeatedly ignored rebel calls for a cease-fire in recent months.

Meanwhile, President Mahinda Rajapaksa scheduled a nationally televised news conference for Tuesday morning at Parliament, where he was expected to tell the nation the war was over.

Troops on Sunday killed at least 70 rebels trying to escape the 0.4-square mile (one-square kilometer) patch of land that government troops have surrounded, the military said. However, the Tamil Tigers' top commanders remained at large. The military said the rebel leadership was likely still in the conflict zone and was planning a mass suicide.

Thousands of Sri Lankans poured into the streets Sunday morning, dancing and setting off celebratory fireworks, after Rajapaksa made an initial declaration of victory in the country's civil war with the separatist rebels.

"We are celebrating a victory against terrorism," said Sujeewa Anthonis, a 32-year-old street hawker.

As the fighting raged on in recent days, concerns mounted for the fate of the tens of thousands of civilians trapped in the war zone amid heavy shelling and intense fighting.

But 63,000 civilians fled the area over the past 72 hours, clearing the way for the government to finish off the rebels, military spokesman Brig. Udaya Nanayakkara said Sunday. With most journalists and aid workers barred from the war zone, it was not possible to verify the assertion.

Astronauts trying to bring device back from dead

HOUSTON – Astronauts are attempting their second in-orbit repair of a dead science instrument on the Hubble Space Telescope in as many days.

Astronauts Mike Massimino and Mike Good on Sunday morning plan to venture out of the space shuttle Atlantis to try to fix a long-dead spectrograph. The day before, two other spacewalkers successfully fixed a camera.

Massimino will remove 117 screws from the device. And he can't let any float away.

It's a repair job that was not part of the scientific instrument's design so NASA had to make dozens of special tools.

The device makes a fingerprint of cosmic objects by separating light. It is good for finding black holes and examining the atmosphere of planets outside our solar system.

Obama: Early to mull more troops in Afghanistan

WASHINGTON – President Barack Obama says he needs to see how fast Afghanistan can be stabilized and led toward a more democratic government before deciding whether more troops are needed.

In an interview with Newsweek magazine, Obama said the hardest thing he has had to do so far in his administration was to order 17,000 troops to Afghanistan on top of an estimated 38,000 that were already in Afghanistan. The interview was released on the Web Saturday.

He did not rule out the possibility of sending even more troops, while stressing such a decision was premature at this point and that U.S. military action is not the only answer to bringing stability to the region.

"We have to see our military action in the context of a broader effort to stabilize security in the country, allow national elections to take place in Afghanistan and then provide the space for the vital development work that's needed so that a tolerant and open, democratically elected government is considered far more legitimate than a Taliban alternative," Obama said.

"My strong view is that we are not going to succeed simply by piling on more and more troops," he added. "The military component is critical to accomplishing that goal, but it is not a sufficient element by itself."

Obama said he wrestled with his options before making the decision in February to order a surge of troops. He said he was sobered by the idea that many men and women could be harmed but that a surge was unavoidable.

"The starting point was a recognition that the existing trajectory was not working, that the Taliban had made advances, that our presence in Afghanistan was declining in popularity, that the instability along the border region was destabilizing Pakistan as well," Obama said.