COLOMBO, May 1, 2009 (AFP) - The Sri Lankan army's website has been targeted in a "cyber terrorism" attack by Tamil rebels, the defence ministry said Friday, and replaced with gruesome photos of apparent victims of the civil war.
The www.army.lk site had been removed by hackers who replaced it with photographs of civilians said to have been killed in military action in the northeast of the island.
Army technicians were working to remove the images, officials told AFP, blaming the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE).
"The official website of the Sri Lanka army, www.army.lk, has been hacked by suspected LTTE hackers this morning," the ministry said in a statement headlined: "LTTE resorts to cyber terrorism".
It said the attack was "another sign of the LTTE’s inevitable defeat".
After months of heavy fighting, the Tigers are said by the Sri Lankan military to be down to their last few hundred fighters.
The UN has put the number of civilians trapped in the small patch of rebel-held territory at 50,000, while the government says there are fewer than 20,000.
About 110,000 Tamils displaced by the violence have been detained in congested government-run camps, where food, water and medical shortages have been reported.
