Sri Lanka will sell 80 percent of the $1.5 billion Hambantota port to a Chinese firm, reports Reuters.

Speaking at the country’s Foreign Correspondents Association on Thursday, Sri Lanka’s Finance Minister Ravi Karunanayake said,

Buddhist monks from India visited Jaffna this week to pray for the two Tamil university students shot dead by Sri Lankan police last Thursday. 

Conducted a peaceful march outside the grounds of the university, the monks called for the violence to cease. 

Students in Tamil Nadu this week held a protest demonstrating against the killing of two Jaffna university students last Thursday. 

A human skeleton was found by locals in Uruthirapuram, Kilinochchi district on Thursday.

The police are yet to identify the skeleton, however have said the deceased appears to have died around two months earlier. 

Two Sri Lankan army intelligence officers who have been held over the disappearance of Sinhalese cartoonist Prageeth Eknaligoda have been released on bail this week.

The suspects are first accused Lt. Col. Shammi Arjuna Kumararatne and third accused Staff Sgt. Rajapaksa Mudiyanselage Priyantha Kumara Rajapaksa, reports The Island.

A total of seven suspects have now been released on bail by the Sri Lankan courts. A further two suspects continue to be held in remand.

Sri Lanka’s Joint Opposition has challenged the government to provide extra security assurances for police officers in the North-East, following clashes in Kilinochchi between Sri Lankan police and locals protesting over the killing of two Jaffna University students.

Militarisation is the biggest threat faced by the people of Jaffna, according to the findings of an NGO report published last week.

The Sri Lankan Inspector General of Police, Pujith Jayasundara, reportedly admitted to the Daily News that the killing of two Jaffna University students last week was a "clear breach of discipline". 

The coalition of Tamil civil society groups, the Tamil Civil Society Forum this week condemned the Sri Lankan police's shooting dead of two Tamil students of the Jaffna University last Thursday. 

"The killings that took place now, have the power to deepen further the oppressive situation," TCSF said in a statement calling for a accountability and justice. 

The case of the assassination of the Tamil National Alliance (TNA) MP Nadaraja Raviraj is to take place before a special jury, the Colombo high court was reported by the Daily Mirror to have said today. 

Mr Raviraj was murdered along side his driver in 2006. Six people have been indicted. 
 

Sri Lanka’s president Maithripala Sirisena stated that it was his responsibility “to protect the forces and the honour of the war heroes” in an interview to Lankadeepa this week.

Sri Lanka’s Law and Order Minister Sagala Ratnayake walked out of a press conference in Colombo on Wednesday, after refusing to answer questions on the Sri Lankan military’s alleged connection to gangs in Jaffna.

Mr Ratnayake was hosting a media briefing when he was asked by a journalist on the military link to gangs in the region.

The spent bullet casing from an AK-47 rifle has been found by forensic investigators at the site of the murder of two Tamil university students in Jaffna last week.

Forensic investigators explore the murder scene on Wednesday, identifying the exact location where the students were killed.

A group of Tamil youth where attacked by masked men yielding swords, during the Mass Hartal that took place on Tuesday.

On Tuesday night a group of unidentified people in a white van with no number plate jumped out in the Anaikottai region of Jaffna shouting “ Are you Tamils going to unite?” and attacked a group of youth in front of their house.

The victims added that the attackers spoke SInhalese and broken Tamil before proceeding to attack their motorcycles.