Hundreds of police launched raids around London yesterday in a major crackdown on organised crime gangs based around the British capital's Sri Lankan Tamil community, officers said. Thirteen Sri Lankan men were arrested in connection with crimes linked to serious violence, drugs and fraud, some of the proceeds of which are thought to end up with the Tamil Tiger rebel group in Sri Lanka. The Tigers have waged a bloody, decades-long fight for a separate state in the north of Sri Lanka for the country's Tamil minority, in which more than 60,000 people have died. Tamil gangs in London had been linked to a series of crimes including 10 murders over the past few years, the Metropolitan Police said on Tuesday. The "vast majority" of London's large Tamil community, estimated to be almost 100,000-strong, were law-abiding and were in fact the main targets of the gangs, said police commander Alfred Hitchcock.