A new mayor has been appointed in the northern town of Jaffna in Sri Lanka to replace Sarojini Yogeswaran who was shot dead earlier this month.

He is Ponnuthurai Sivapalan, a lawyer, who is a long standing member of apro-government Tamil party The Tamil United Liberation Front which won local elections earlier this year.

The BBC correspondent in Colombo says that apart from security problems, Mr Sivapalan faces the difficult task of rebuilding the city's devastated infrastructure.