தமிழ் கனடியனில் காணக்கிடைக்கப் பட்ட இரு இணைப்புகளை இங்கு தேவை கருதி தருகின்றேன்.

From Newyork Times (Global edition for Asia & Pacific)

Published: January 28, 2009

UN staff and hospital under fire in Sri Lanka

A glimpse of the hellish fate of civilians stuck in the epicenter of Sri Lanka's war emerged this week, as the United Nations confirmed that staff members and their families had come under heavy shelling in what the government told them was a no-fire zone, and a government health official, also behind the front line, described artillery attacks on a hospital compound.

For several weeks, fighting has intensified between government troops and rebels of an ethnic separatist group, the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam, also called the Tamil Tigers. The battles have pushed civilians living in rebel-held areas steadily into an ever-shrinking corner of northeastern Sri Lanka.

The last major rebel-held town, Mullaittivu, fell last Sunday, the government announced. The government has insisted that their battles with the Tamil Tigers have carefully spared civilians. But the latest information emerging from behind the front line, which has been closed to journalists, challenges that claim, even as it signals that the Tamil Tigers are using civilians as shields.

In Asia's longest-running war, the rebels have fought for 25 years to carve out a separate homeland for the ethnic Tamil minority, relying on conventional ground, sea and air forces and their trademark cadre of suicide bombers.

The predicament of a United Nations team, which had been delivering aid to families displaced by the fighting, showed the dwindling options for civilians.

First, the team of mostly Sri Lankan aid workers and their families were prevented by the guerrillas, also known by the initials LTTE, from leaving the war zone. Then, on Saturday, they took shelter in what the government described as a no-fire zone, erecting a temporary compound, around which many civilians had also gathered.

A shell landed near the compound on Saturday evening, and then another early Sunday morning, killing 9 civilians and wounding more than 20, according to a memo sent by United Nations officials in Sri Lanka to their headquarters in New York.

"Our team on the ground was certain the shell came from the Sri Lanka military, but apparently in response to an LTTE shell," the memo read. "All around them was the carnage from casualties from people who may have thought they would be safer being near the UN Sadly they were wrong that night."

A United Nations official, speaking Tuesday on condition of anonymity, said the team on the ground had suspected that the rebels were firing at government forces from close to where civilians were taking shelter. "Both sides are egregiously flouting humanitarian norms and principles, and as a result civilians are dying," the official said.

The spokesman for the Sri Lankan military, Brig. V. U. B. Nanayakkara, denied that government artillery had hit a United Nations compound, or a hospital compound. He said that either the relief and hospital officials had been pressed by the rebels to disseminate false information, or that the Tamil Tigers had been responsible for the shelling.

"How can they say it has come from the army artillery?" he asked, by telephone from Colombo, Sri Lanka's capital. He accused the rebels in turn of barring ambulances to bring wounded civilians to hospitals outside the war zone.

The Sri Lankan military has seized important rebel strongholds in recent weeks, pushing the Tamil Tigers, and more than 200,000 civilians believed to be in the rebel-controlled area, into a small corner of jungle in the island's northeast. Those civilians have moved many times since the war resumed two and a half years ago.

Among them is a government health official, Dr. T. Sathiyamoorthy. He first ran the hospital in the erstwhile rebel capital, Kilinochchi. Before it fell to government troops, he moved with the town's displaced families to a nearby town, Dharmapuram.

There, he set up a makeshift hospital for three months, and when fighting grew worse, moved again to the village of Udayarkattu, where he once again set up a hospital, this time in a school compound off the main road that snakes up the coast.

On Sunday, the hospital compound, where Sathiyamoorthy said 1,000 displaced people were taking shelter, was shelled, instantly killing four people. On Monday, he said, it was shelled again, wounding 10.

In the past two days, 33 dead bodies have been carted to the hospital from fighting nearby, the doctor said, and three patients bled to death in the hospital. He has no surgeons.

He said that there were 100 wounded patients, and that he feared more would die.

"We have to send them to a safe place, and only then we can move," Sathiyamoorthy said by telephone. "Unfortunately, the attack is still going on. We are in a fearful situation. We are in a helpless situation."

Link:

Nye York Times Link

Edited January 28, 200916 yr by நிழலி

This is from 'The Independent'

From London

Massacre in the Sri Lanka 'safe zone'

Thousands of civilians are caught in fighting as army encircles the Tamil Tigers after seizing last rebel town

By Andrew Buncombe, Asia Correspondent

Wednesday, 28 January 2009

Dozens of civilians in Sri Lanka are feared dead or wounded after a so-called "safe zone" set aside for refugees came under artillery fire.

It is believed that 250,000 people have become caught up in the end-game of the island's bitter civil war as the military continues to drive the Tamil Tigers into an ever-diminishing area of jungle following the capture of Mullaittivu, the rebels' last major town, at the weekend. Humanitarian convoys, on which the civilians depend, have not been able to reach them for almost two weeks.

UN workers, taking shelter inside a safe area designated by the Sri Lankan government, told how they twice came under fire. About 20 people were killed and many more were wounded in the bombardments. The workers said it was unclear who had fired the shells but it is understood they came from both the government and rebel positions.

Speaking last night from, Colombo, the UN spokesman Gordon Weiss, said: "This is a serious crisis. Our staff were in the designated safe area and there was incoming fire from artillery shells. There were shells which killed and wounded dozens of people, the last of which was Monday morning when 10 people were killed and many more were wounded. They have seen this first hand."

Mr Weiss said he was aware of an unconfirmed report from the regional director of health services that said 300 people had been killed.

The Red Cross said hundreds of Sri Lankans had died during the past two weeks, based on body counts carried out by its staff. "People are being caught in the crossfire, hospitals and ambulances have been hit by shelling, and several aid workers have been injured while evacuating the wounded," said Jacques de Maio, head of the South Asia operations. "When the dust settles, we may see countless victims and a terrible humanitarian situation."

The UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon has issued a statement urging both sides, "to accord immediate and absolute priority to ensuring the protection and well-being of civilians, including humanitarian aid workers".

The growing humanitarian crisis in Sri Lanka comes as government troops continue to force back the separatist Liberation Tigers of Tamil Elam fighters after a decades-long civil war. After capturing Mullaittivu on Sunday, the military is now pushing along a stretch of coastline to try and encircle the rebels, a manoeuvre they believe will be completed within weeks. Yesterday, the military, which has denied firing into the safe zone, escorted journalists into Mullaittivu, a town now largely deserted. As government forces approached, the rebels apparently ordered residents into the jungle and stripped the town of anything that might be of use.

Journalists have been blocked from entering much of the conflict zone and media organisations questioning the military's tactics have been intimidated and even killed, meaning that the government's efforts to crush the Tigers is a largely hidden conflict. So too, is the plight of the hundreds of thousands of civilians, trapped in an area measuring around 115 sq miles. Mr Weiss said most of the civilians, driven north and east by the Sri Lankan army, were now stranded along the A35 road that leads north- west from Mullaittivu – most with just the few possessions that they can carry. It is along the A35 that the government last week designated the "safe zone" for civilians.

A report on the pro-LTTE website TamilNet said: "Unattended bodies and injured people unable to move are lying around everywhere."

Yesterday a convoy ferrying 250 seriously wounded from Puthuku-diyiruppu to a hospital in Vavuniya was forced to turn back after the road was closed.

Link:

The Independent Link