Agence France Presse

Colombo, January 9:

The Sri Lankan Broadcasting Corporation has retracted its report that elusive Tiger head Velupillai Prabhakaran and his intelligence chief Pottu Amman are among the dead or missing in the tsunami disaster, an SLBC official said today. The state broadcaster had yesterday run reports on its English and Tamil language services that the two men had not been seen since the tsunami struck the island on December 26.

The rebel Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam slammed the broadcaster for carrying the reports, saying now was “not the time for gossip mongering and malicious propaganda”. “The LTTE and the Tamil people wish to strongly protest against this mischievous act of the Sri Lanka Broadcasting Corporation, stooping down to such low level of broadcasting news that (is) fabricated by interested parties,” a LTTE statement said. The SLBC offered no reason for its retraction of the report.