Sri Lanka's new president Sunday brought 26 opposition legislators into his government in a move that widened a rift within opposition ranks before early parliamentary elections, officials said.

Sirisena's move to give portfolios to opposition lawmakers further weakened former president Mahinda Rajapakse’s grip on the Sri Lanka Freedom Party, which is now the main opposition.

Sri Lanka said Thursday it had traced more than a billion dollars in public funds allegedly stolen by members of the former regime to a bank in Dubai, and that the total amount taken could be as much as $10 billion.

Rajitha Senaratne, a spokesman for the new government, said investigators had traced $1.06 billion to the National Bank of Dubai, although he did not reveal who held the accounts.

Sri Lanka's police Thursday blocked a protest involving dozens of elephants as their owners demanded legal recognition to use the sacred animals at Buddhist pageants and cultural events.

Police put up barriers at the main access roads to parliament, but half a dozen elephants, travelling in trucks, managed to slip through the blockade.

Sri Lanka's new government suffered its first defection on Tuesday when the higher education minister quit, saying political reforms had not gone far enough.

Rajiva Wijesinghe said proposed constitutional changes fell short of the promises made by President Maithripala Sirisena before he was elected in January.

Narendra Modi visited Jaffna on Saturday, making a highly symbolic first trip by an Indian prime minister to Sri Lanka's war-ravaged northern Tamil heartland after urging greater autonomy for the island's largest minority.

The Jaffna peninsula in Sri Lanka's far north was worst hit by the country's 37-year civil war that killed at least 100,000 people, mostly Tamils, and remains heavily militarized.

India's Prime Minister Narendra Modi embarked Tuesday on a three-nation tour of Indian Ocean islands, including a visit to neighboring Sri Lanka aimed at reinvigorating ties with the new government.

Modi's first stop will be the Seychelles followed by Mauritius and then Sri Lanka on Friday, where he will travel to the war-torn Tamil heartland of Jaffna, becoming only the second foreign leader to visit the region.

India said Monday it was working with Sri Lanka's new government to repatriate thousands of ethnic minority Tamils who fled the island during nearly four decades of separatist war.

Indian Foreign Secretary S. Jaishankar said discussions were ongoing for the return of 100,000 refugees from the southern state of Tamil Nadu, which is separated from Sri Lanka by a narrow stretch of sea.

Sri Lankan authorities Thursday extended by 90 days the detention of a suspected former Tamil rebel fighter arrested as she was returning to her home in France, police said.

Murugesu Jayaganesh Pakeerathy, 41, was arrested on Monday when she was at the airport with her eight-year-old daughter, a French national, and initially detained for 72 hours pending investigations by an anti-terrorism unit, said police spokesman Ajith Rohana.

Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi will visit Sri Lanka's former war zone and Tamil heartland of Jaffna during a visit to the island this month, the government said Thursday.

Modi, who will also address parliament during his three-day visit, will be only the second foreign leader to visit Jaffna, the centre of bitter fighting between government forces and Tamil rebels seeking independence.

A top United Nations official urged Sri Lanka's new government Tuesday to immediately release Tamil detainees and demilitarize former conflict areas to build confidence ahead of a fresh probe into alleged war crimes.

Jeffrey Feltman, the U.N.'s under secretary general for political affairs, said the government of President Maithripala Sirisena, which came to power earlier this year, should make concessions to win the trust of minority Tamils who remain largely skeptical about his intentions.