Fonseka, a former army chief, condemned the result and promised to launch a legal challenge.

Though there were other complaints, the primary objection appears to have been that President Rajapaska used government resources in campaigning

Officials weren’t keen on taking the criticism of the campaign, however, and in short order troops has surrounded the hotel and disarmed Fonseka’s security detail. Government officials initially said the move was designed to “prevent a coup,” but now President Rajapaksa insists Fonseka is free to leave, adding “he has gone into the hotel, he can go out.”

The opposition reportedly fears for its safety in the wake of the vote, and Fonseka is said to be mulling exile in either India or the United States if he is unable to appeal the vote safely.

Sri Lanka declared victory in the 26 year long civil war last week, having killed the leader of the LTTE and captured the last tiny swath of the island controlled by the rebels. The final months of the violence took a considerable toll on the Tamil population of the island’s north.

Information about the final clash has been tough to come by, but journalist Marie Colvin gave a compelling report of the final hours today, in which she obtained a guarantee of safety for top rebel chiefs just hours before the final offensive, and was reassured by the government that the army would not harm them. All the chiefs involved in the deal were slain.

The Sri Lankan government denied any role in the shelling, and insisted that the military had not fired artillery in the area in weeks. The denial holds considerably less weight given the wealth of satellite imagery and eyewitness accounts collected by Human Rights Watch, which show that the attacks have continued.

President Barack Obama touched on the conflict briefly today during his defense of the reversal on the release of detainee abuse photos. He urged the rebel faction (the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam) to turn in their weapons immediately and cautioned the Sri Lankan government to halt its indiscriminate attacks on hospitals. Despite omnipresent predictions of quick victories, the history of the 26 year old civil war suggests neither of these is likely to happen any time soon.

The 12 attackers, who the Lahore police chief said “appeared to be well-trained terrorists” attacked the Sri Lankan national cricket team, and while the team managed to escape the attack with only a handful of injured players the team is being recalled over security questions, another major black eye for Pakistan on the international scene.

The extent of the fallout is yet to be clear, but the Indian government has already used the attack as an excuse to once again condemn the Pakistani government for its inability to deal with the problem of terrorism in the nation.

At the same time, some have speculated that the attack may backfire on the terrorists, given cricket’s enormous popularity in the nation. It is not clear yet who was behind the attack, however, and the attackers are still being sought by security forces.

But as the war rages on, the Sri Lankan military has pushed the separatists into an ever-shrinking corner. At this point they control less than 50 square kms, a tiny patch of land filled with as many as 200,000 trapped civilians in deteriorating conditions.

Yet while a military victory seems inevitable, the harsh treatment of Tamil civilians and a growing number of refugees facing open-ended detention in grim “resettlement camps” seem to be setting the stage for more resentment and separatist sentiment in the years to come.

Now, that area and those refugees have lost their final hospital. The Red Cross had to abandon the overcrowded facility along with hundreds of wounded civilians today, after the Sri Lankan military attacked them. According to the United Nations the attack involved the use of cluster bombs.

The Sri Lankan military denies that the attack, just one of many attacks on hospitals in the past few weeks, involved cluster munitions, and indeed they deny even having such weapons. This is bound to spawn the question: if Sri Lanka has no cluster bombs why did they refuse to sign the ban on cluster bombs?

The use of cluster bombs is certainly among the least of the problems of wartime Sri Lanka, which has deliberately attacked hospitals and other civilian targets on a regular basis and has threatened media and aid workers it feels are not sufficiently pro-war. Yet the use of cluster munitions in a densely populated civilian region – against a civilian target no less, is likely to be a durable reminder of the brutality of this offensive, and when they finally declare victory it is unlikely to be forgotten by those Tamil civilians who are left alive.

But under growing pressure from the Red Cross, President Mahinda Rajapaksa says his military will allow a “48-hour window” in which the 250,000 civilians who have been forced to flee into the dense jungle to escape the advancing troops will be allowed to flee to some other undefined “secure environment.”

Yet with the government’s history of haphazard offensives – they declared a safe zone for civilians last week and then attacked one of their own makeshift hospitals inside it – the Tamil population is unlikely to find any truly secure environment anywhere on the island.

The growing humanitarian crisis has not gone entirely unnoticed internationally, and protests have been held worldwide: most notably in the Tamil-heavy southern portion of India and downtown Toronto. Yet by and large the international community, perhaps weary of the 25+ year long conflict, has remained largely silent. This has left the Sri Lankan government free to launch its final push against the rebels, and while it may succeed in destroying this particular rebel faction, history suggests the heavy civilian toll will ensure the separatist sentiment to continue for years to come.

The latest complain today came from Sri Lankan health officials, who say that the military has been shelling a makeshift hospital inside a government-declared “safe zone” for civilians for the past three days, and has killed at least 67 civilians in the attacks.

The “safe zone” was established primarily in an effort to get civilians to leave the nearby war zones, allowing the government forces more leeway to target rebels. Yet their success in coaxing the civilians into the safe zone means little if the military is just going to shell that as well.

The separatist conflict between the Sri Lankan government and the Tamil rebels (largely the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam) has endured for over 25 years, and has killed tens of thousands of combatants, as well as untold thousands of civilians.