At least 19 person had died and 43 persons were missing due to floods and gale force winds experienced in several parts of the country during the last three days, the Disaster Management Centre (DMC) said yesterday.

The DMC said 41 persons had been injured in 14 districts.

The District Secretaries have reported that 53,773 people belonging to 13,337 families have been displaced by the floods and winds; 630 houses have been destroyed and 5,094 damaged.

Fourteen deaths have been reported from the Matara district (11 from Weligama). Over 40 people have gone missing. Those rendered homeless are 13,430 (2,686 families), while 27 people have been injured. About 426 houses have been destroyed and 2,141 others damaged.

Three deaths were reported from the Galle District, where 13 persons were injured, while 9,186 persons (2,534 families) have been badly affected. Over 196 houses have been destroyed and 2,377 others damaged.

The Lessons Learnt and Reconciliation Commission (LLRC) has, in its final report, said that no state should be asked to suspend military operations aimed at rescuing civilians forcibly held by a heavily armed terrorist group. The failure on the part of a state to proceed with such operations will only allow terrorists to go on the rampage, the presidential commission has said.

The LLRC is of the view that the International Humanitarian Law (IHL) prohibits the deliberate targeting of civilians but it does not frown on combat operations undertaken by a government to rescue hostages. The withdrawal or suspension of combat operations will only aggravate such a crisis.

The eight-member Presidential Commission has made these observations in response to various accusations by a section of the international community, mainly the one that civilians were targeted during the final phase of the ground offensive in the Vanni in 2009.

The Jathika Hela Urumaya (JHU), a coalition partner of the ruling United People’s Freedom Alliance (UPFA), yesterday struck a discordant note over the controversial Revival of Underperforming Enterprises and Underutilised Assets Bill (RUEUA) to be put to vote today in Parliament.

JHU sources told The Island that the two JHU MPs would either oppose the Bill or abstain from voting if the government tried to secure its passage without amendments. A final decision on the matter, however, would be taken by the party leadership today, sources said.

THE criticism of Sri Lanka's President Mahinda Rajapaksa, when he visited Australia for the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting in Perth, left the key Sri Lankan villain out of the story.

The criticism was that the Sri Lankan government engaged in serious human rights abuses, shelling areas where civilians were present, at the end of its civil war with the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam, in May last year.

Both sides committed atrocities in this war, but the defeat of the Tamil Tigers was a decisive defeat of perhaps the bloodiest and most murderous terrorist group the world has seen.