The editor of a prominent anti-government newspaper in Sri Lanka has been shot while on his way to work, two days after attackers torched the offices of the country’s privately-owned television station.

Lasantha Wickrematunga, editor of the Sunday Leader newspaper, is in a critical condition after being attacked while in his car in Colombo this morning. He is believed to have been shot in the chest, head and abdomen.

The attack is the latest in a string of assaults aimed at journalists critical of the Sri Lankan government, amid an atmosphere of growing patriotic fervour caused by the seemingly imminent military collapse of the Tamil Tiger guerrillas in the north.

The Sunday Leader is an anti-establishment newspaper which has exposed several privatisation deals that ended up being overturned, and Mr Wickrematunga has fought multiple defamation cases brought by senior politicians.

Only 48 hours before, arsonists had burnt down the offices of the largest privately-owned television station in Sri Lanka, Maharaja TV, which had been labelled “unpatriotic” by the government for its coverage of the civil war.

Campaigners for press freedom in Colombo said that the spate of attacks, although not carried out by the government itself, had come about because of an atmosphere of intimidating being whipped up by the administration.

Jehan Perera, of the Colombo-based NGO, the Non-Violence Peace Council, which campaigns for a peace deal between the Sinhalese-run government and Sri Lanka’s Tamil minority, told The Times: “Attacks have taken place on journalists who criticise the government or who have reported on the war.

“The government may not have committed these attacks itself, but there is a build up, and creation, of an environment in which such attacks are made.”

Sri Lanka's President Mahinda Rajapakse has said government troops are close to eliminating the Tamil Tigers after a series of major victories on the battlefield.

Security forces are pushing into remaining rebel-held territory in the north - mainly confined to the jungle - after capturing Kilinochchi, its de facto political capital, last week.

With the capital Colombo fearing suicide attacks in retribution, the southern city has been filled with military checkpoints and racial profiling of Tamils based there has intensified.

The Government upped the pressure on the rebels further by officially banned the Tigers in a unanimous vote held yesterday.

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