Journalists in Sri Lanka expressed fresh fears for their safety today after the headquarters of the country’s biggest privately owned television station were destroyed in an arson attack.

In the latest in a series of attacks against reporters, vandals smashed the the studios and control room of the Maharaja TV network, just outside the capital, Colombo, and then burnt them down.

The station has become a target after a concerted campaign of criticism directed towards it by the Sri Lankan Government, which said that its coverage of the military’s victory last week in Kilinochchi, the former capital of the Tamil Tigers, was “unpatriotic”.

Campaigners accused the Government, which condemned the attack, of becoming increasingly strong-armed with the media in Sri Lanka as it nears complete victory against the Tigers. Journalists have been subjected to a near-blanket ban from the north of the country, where the fighting is taking place, and a growing number of reporters critical of the government campaign have been beaten up, intimidated or barred from Sri Lanka.

“It is increasingly difficult and it is also intimidating to express your opinion freely, especially if it is reporting on military matters,” Jehan Perera, of the Colombo-based Non-Violence Peace Council, told The Times. “These attacks follow concerted attacks by the Government against this particular TV station for not being patriotic enough.”

The Sri Lankan Government, which is dominated by the Sinhalese ethnic group, had played a part in creating an atmosphere of intimidation aimed against reporters, opposition activists and ethnic Tamils in Colombo, he said.

“There is, clearly, a build-up and a creation of an environment in which such an attacks are being made and people are being accused of being traitors.”

Employees of Maharaja TV would not comment on the attacks.

Several Sri Lankan journalists have been killed in recent weeks, but no one has been held responsible despite government promises to investigate. Last summer, the political officer of the British Embassy in Colombo was injured after being dragged out of his car and attacked, along with a journalist accompanying him on a trip.

As details of the attack emerged, Sri Lankan forces said that they had overrun another of the Tamil Tigers's fortifications in the far north, as the rebels' ever-reducing base in the jungle shrunk further. The capture of Muhamalai, on the Jaffna peninsular, was a further blow to the Tigers after their defeat in Kilinochci and Keheliya Rambukwella.

A defence spokesman said that the Government hoped to clear the entire north of rebels completely in the "coming weeks". If achieved, this would effectively end the 25-year-old conflict that has killed more than 70,000 people and left about 230,000 internally displaced in Asia's longest-running civil war.

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