UN chief urges 'pause' in Sri Lanka fighting

Sunday, April 26, 2009 at 4:13 AM Posted by Beijing News


UN humanitarian chief John Holmes on Sunday appealed to Sri Lanka to halt their military offensive against the Tamil Tigers in order to allow aid workers to help civilians trapped in the war zone.

Holmes, the under-secretary general for humanitarian affairs, told government leaders that months of fierce fighting had taken "a terrible toll" on civilians, as international pressure grew for an immediate ceasefire.

The UN believes up to 50,000 civilians are trapped in a strip of jungle where Sri Lankan soldiers have surrounded the remnants of the once powerful Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam LTTE.

"We need a new humanitarian pause to get aid and aid workers into the combat zone," Holmes said in a statement, adding that the Tiger guerrillas should "let out the remaining civilian population and lay down their arms."

Holmes, on a three-day visit to Sri Lanka, met Sunday with Human Rights and Disaster Management Minister Mahinda Samarasinghe and was due to see other leaders before leaving the island.

He has said he also intends to inspect the camps where 100,000 Tamil civilians have been detained since escaping the violence.

The government say the camps are necessary as it searches for former Tiger fighters hiding among those who have fled.

"We must have access to all IDPs internally displaced people wherever they are, including in the conflict zone, and the screening process must also be made more transparent," said Holmes.

The United States and the Group of Eight G8 industrialised nations have repeated international calls for a halt in the fighting.

But the Sri Lankan government has said it is determined to drive home a military offensive that appears on the brink of wiping out the Tiger rebels, who have waged an armed campaign for an independent Tamil homeland since 1972.

The Tigers controlled a third of the island in late 2006 but are now penned into a coastal area measuring just 10 square kilometres four square miles.

Their founder and leader, Velupillai Prabhakaran, is believed to be among the few remaining Tiger fighters who are making a last stand against an overwhelming military onslaught.

The LTTE have been accused of holding civilians hostage, but thousands of people have poured out of the rebels' refuge over the last week.

Defence Secretary Gotabhaya Rajapakse said "98 percent" of the civilians trapped by the Tigers had now escaped.

"The humanitarian operations of the Sri Lanka army will be to liberate these people still trapped as their first priority," Rajapakse told the state-run Sunday Observer.

Soldiers captured another village on the edge of the Tigers' territory and freed about 500 civilians held hostage, the government said on Sunday.

The military successes have come at a huge cost to civilians, rights groups say, with the UN estimating as many as 6,500 non-combatants may have been killed and another 14,000 wounded in the fighting so far this year.

The LTTE issued their own call for foreign intervention, warning of "imminent" starvation among the trapped civilians.



Supinsky

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