The Red Cross warned of a humanitarian catastrophe yesterday as the Sri Lankan Army prepared for a final assault on the last pocket of rebel-held territory where tens of thousands of civilians are trapped.
The army said that it had evacuated tens of thousands of civilians and advanced into a 6.5 square-mile no-fire zone where the last 200 Tamil Tiger fighters are.
The Red Cross disputed a claim by the army to have rescued 40,000 of the trapped civilians on Monday and 20,000 yesterday in what President Rajapaksa called “the largest-ever hostage rescue mission”.
A spokeswoman for the Red Cross — the only international organisation with staff on the front line — told The Times that it had witnessed only 4,000 civilians leaving the no-fire zone on Monday.
“We’ve heard very conflicting reports about the numbers,” Sarasi Wijeratne, an information officer at the Red Cross office in Colombo, said. “What we can say is that we’ve confirmed that 4,000 civilians crossed into government territory over the weekend and another 4,000 crossed over on Monday.”
She said that Red Cross staff would not give a figure for yesterday until this morning, adding that the organisation had about a hundred staff inside the no-fire zone.
The discrepancy in the figures is sensitive because the army will begin its final assault as soon as its feels that enough civilians have left — despite international calls for it to wait.
The Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) have been fighting since 1983 for an ethnic Tamil homeland, but the army appears poised to defeat them.
Brigadier Udaya Nanayakkara told The Times: “What we’re doing at the moment is a rescue operation. Troops have moved in and taken over one stretch of the safety zone. They are expanding that stretch as more civilians escape.”
The operation gathered pace after the noon deadline for the Tigers to surrender passed without any word from the rebels.
Several hours later the Tigers issued a defiant statement. “LTTE will never surrender and we will fight and we have the confidence that we will win with the help of the Tamil people,” said Seevaratnam Puleedevan, the secretary-general of the Tigers’ peace secretariat.
The army, which had said for weeks that there were fewer than 50,000 civilians inside the zone, estimates that there are no more than 30,000 left. The UN and the Red Cross said that there were more than double that number — many of them injured.
Contact us | Terms and Conditions | Privacy Policy | Site Map | FAQ | Syndication | Advertising
© Times Newspapers Ltd 2010 Registered in England No. 894646 Registered office: 3 Thomas More Square, London, E98 1XY