Sri Lanka troops raid university

Hundreds of Sri Lankan soldiers raided a university, seizing computers and detaining a student, in the northern Tamil heartland where the government has been battling separatist rebels, the military and a pro-rebel website said today.

The troops surrounded the campus of Jaffna University on Friday, broke into the offices of the university’s student federation and arrested its leader, the pro-rebel Web site TamilNet said.

The military said the student group was a front for Tamil Tiger rebel activities, and said it found a large number of rebel pamphlets and a computer with “Tiger-related software”.

A search of the surrounding area uncovered 15 anti-personnel mines and other equipment used to build anti-tank mines, military spokesman Maj. Upali Rajapakse said. Photographs of the alleged mines and confiscated items were displayed on the military’s website.

TamilNet said the detained student was a third year arts major from Mullaitivu, deep inside rebel territory in the northeast.

It was not immediately possible to reach the university for comment because the government-controlled Jaffna Peninsula has been cut off by the military due to the fighting there, which has killed more than 800 people since August 11, according to the military and the rebels. Phone service works only intermittently.

Tamil Tiger rebels have been fighting the government for over 20 years for a separate homeland in the east and north for the country’s minority ethnic Tamils, who suffered decades of discrimination and persecution by the majority ethnic Sinhalese.

The Tamil-majority peninsula has seen some of the worst fighting since a cease-fire was signed four years ago as the rebels try to retake what they consider to be the heart of ethnic Tamil culture.

A Norwegian-brokered cease-fire in 2002 was supposed to end the violence, in which as many as 65,000 people were killed, many of them civilians.

But violence surged in December, and both sides have since launched several major offensives, killing at least 1,500 people, according to international monitors.