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Sri Lanka: Thousands escape war zone
 [Mail and Globe] More than 23 000 civilians escaped last month from a war zone in Sri Lanka's north, where the military appears close to crushing the Tamil Tiger rebels, the government said on Wednesday. That doesn't bode well for next year's NGO funding. Someone somewhere is trying to think of a good reason they should go back. Tens of thousands of civilians have been trapped by the fighting as the military has rolled up a series of battlefield victories and pushed the rebels into a small sliver of beach and land -- measuring just 21 square kilometres -- on the northeast coast. That's only slightly larger than Prabhakaran's own acreage. The 23 606 who fled in March was down from the nearly 33 000 who escaped in February, but the fighting last month was confined to a smaller area and it was not as easy to flee. Maybe there weren't as many people, too. The rebels, the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE), have denied accusations that they are holding the people as human shields and have fired on them to stop them from fleeing. "No, no! Certainly not!" Military spokesperson Udaya Nanayakkara told a news conference that the fighting in some cases was just 400m from the edge of a government-declared "no-fire" zone, which takes up most of the war zone. "Troops are operating close to the safe zone," he told a news conference. Nanayakkara said more than 62 000 people have now fled the fighting. Defence spokesperson Keheliya Rambukwella estimated there were 30 000 to 40 000 civilians still trapped in the area. Rambukwella repeated comments by President Mahinda Rajapaksa rejecting calls for a ceasefire, saying it would give the rebels a chance to rearm and regroup. "It is not something that is possible," he said. Posted by: Fred 2009-04-02 |
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