The Ceylon News

	Tamil Tiger planes shot down in Colombo

According to the military, Twenty-four year old Charles Anthony was taking part in the fighting against the advancing Sri Lanka army in Puthukkudiyiruppu.

There is no independent confirmation of his injury and no comment from the Tamil Tigers.

"Intelligence sources confirmed that LTTE leader Prabhakaran's elder son, Charles Anthony, was injured in fighting." military spokesman Brigadier Udaya Nanayakkara said.

mastermind behind air attacks

He had no details of the extent of the injuries or his condition.

According to Sri Lanka army website, Charles Anthony is an important member of the Tamil Tigers.

He is trained as an expert on manufacturing explosives say the website.

"He was instrumental in producing at least two kinds of powerful LTTE bombs, known as 'Ragavan I, II, III' and 'Samadana Shell'. He was also associated with the production of bombs for use in LTTE aircraft".

The military also say that Charles Anthony was the mastermind behind air attacks carried out by Tamil Tigers.

The son and heir apparent to Tamil Tiger leader Velupillai Prabhakaran has been wounded in a gunbattle with soldiers trying to crush the separatist rebels, the military said on Wednesday.

The battle to end the quarter-century war is centered around 25 square km (10 sq miles) of the Indian ocean island's northeastern coast, where the army has encircled the Tigers and tens of thousands of civilians trapped there.

"Intelligence sources confirmed that LTTE leader Prabhakaran's elder son, Charles Anthony, was injured in fighting," military spokesman Brigadier Udaya Nanayakkara said. He had no details of the extent of the injuries or his condition. There was no independent confirmation available and the Tigers could not be reached for comment.

Nanayakkara also said troops killed at least 19 guerrillas on Tuesday.

The Tigers on Tuesday accused the international community and the United Nations of maintaining a double standard by saying the rebels should comply with humanitarian law, while ignoring what it says are attacks on civilians by the Sri Lankan military.

The United Nations, rights groups and other nations have said the Tigers are holding people prisoner as human shields, and shooting those who try to leave. They also have said the government has shelled areas packed with civilians.

Both sides deny the allegations.

The United Nations, United States and Britain have all urged both sides to observe a "humanitarian pause" to let people trapped in the war zone escape.

The Tigers, who are on U.S., EU, Indian and Canadian terrorism lists, on Tueaday accused the international community of not doing enough to push a ceasefire.

President Mahinda Rajapaksa on Tuesday again rejected the call as a Tiger ruse to buy time to re-arm, and said the war would go on until the Tigers surrendered or were destroyed.

The Tigers since 1983 have been waging a civil war to create a separate nation for Sri Lanka's Tamil minority, which complains of mistreatment at the hands of successive governments led by the Sinhalese majority since independence from Britain in 1948. (Editing by Bryson Hull and Sugita Katyal)

Sri Lankan government has said this would only help the rebels recover from the effects of the conflict and will prolong the 25-year-old war.

"It is unfortunate that some in the international community have fallen straight into the well-laid trap of the LTTE and are calling for a ceasefire... which would only help the terrorists to recover and drag this war for another twenty five years," Foreign Secretary Palitha Kohona said here.

Kohona said the Tigers have consistently ignored the government's appeals for letting the Tamil civilians trapped in the war zone leave for safer areas, thereby demonstrating "again and again the utter and callous disregard paid by LTTE to the very people they claim to represent".

"As the LTTE's delusion fades into history, the government is calling on Tamils living overseas to return to the warm embrace of mother Lanka and seek a common future with all her other children, whether they be Tamils, Muslims, Sinhalese, Malays, Burghers," he told representatives of the Tamil diaspora.

Kohana said the Sri Lankan government wishes to build a partnership with the Tamil diaspora and said they should consider funding the education of children from the areas which were until recently under the LTTE control.

"These children represent the future of Sri Lanka and have the potential to be our leaders in the future. They are Sri Lanka's future," he said.