Sri Lankan official says president meets with top Indian officials to discuss recent fighting

Sri Lankan president meets with Indian envoys

COLOMBO, Sri Lanka — President Mahinda Rajapaksa has met with two top Indian officials to discuss the bloody fighting in Sri Lanka’s recent offensive against ethnic Tamil rebels.

A government official says Rajapaksa met with India’s National Security Adviser M. K. Narayanan and Foreign Secretary Shivshankar Menon in Colombo on Friday afternoon. Details of the meeting were not immediately available.

India said Thursday it was sending the pair to neighboring Sri Lanka to push for an immediate halt in the fighting to allow civilians to escape the war zone.

A U.N. report says nearly 6,500 civilians have been killed in the fighting over the past three months.