Hundreds flee as Sri Lanka fighting continues
Hundreds who fled heavy fighting in Sri Lanka’s war zone waited to be evacuated from a tiny coastal village today as the UN reported that nearly 6,500 ethnic Tamil civilians were killed in the last three months.
Civilians told of Tamil Tiger rebels using them as human shields.
Many had been moving with the retreating rebels for months as the advancing army chipped away at the insurgents’ territory, trying to end the nation’s quarter-century of civil strife.
The UN estimates that 50,000 people were still trapped in the war zone after more than 100,000 fled earlier this week.
Thangamuttu Sathyamurthi, a top government health official in the war zone, said there was a severe shortage of food and medicine in the area and people were dying of starvation.
The violence was so intense that many people were abandoning their dying relatives to flee the fighting, he said.
Doctors Without Borders, a medical relief group, said the civilians pouring out of the conflict zone included large numbers with blast, mine and gunshot wounds.
The rebels have denied accusations they used civilians as human shields.
At least 6,432 civilians have been killed in the intense fighting over the past three months and 13,946 wounded, according to a private UN document circulated among diplomatic missions in Sri Lanka in recent days.
Civilian deaths have increased dramatically, according to the UN. An average of 33 civilians were killed each day at the end of January, and that jumped to 116 by April, the document said. More than 5,500 of those killed were inside a government-declared “no-fire” zone.
Foreign Secretary Palitha Kohona said the government took special care to avoid civilian casualties, and that many of those killed were combatants dressed in civilian clothing.
The Sri Lankan military on Friday gave journalists rare access to Puttumattalan, which until earlier this week was inside the section of rebel territory designated as a “no-fire” zone.
The area around the village is full of coconut trees, but most of their leafy tops had been blown off. Roads in the region were nearly deserted except for military vehicles and lines of damaged or destroyed houses. No building was intact.
Neighbouring India, under pressure from its own Tamil population in the midst of a national election, sent National Security Adviser M. K. Narayanan and Foreign Secretary Shivshankar Menon to Sri Lanka to meet President Mahinda Rajapaksa.
They expressed their concerns about the civilian casualties and the plight of those who already fled. Yesterday India called for an immediate cease-fire to allow the civilians to escape.
But Media Minister Lakshman Yapa Abeywardena said the government had no plans for a cease-fire. “The military operations will continue to free the remaining civilians,” he said.
Brigadier Shavendra Silva, a top commander in the conflict zone, said his troops were on the verge of crushing the remaining rebels and ending the 25-year civil war. More than 70,000 have died in the fighting to create an independent homeland for ethnic minority Tamils, who have faced decades of marginalisation by governments controlled by the ethnic Sinhalese majority.
