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Humanitarian agencies have been warning for months that there would be huge civilian casualties if the Sri Lankan Army and the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam continued their fight to the death with thousands of unarmed people caught between them. No one paid much heed to the desperate warnings except for the relief agencies themselves, and on Sunday, they appeared to prove correct...
...doctor working in a makeshift hospital inside the shrinking war zone in northern Sri Lanka told the Associated Press that 378 civilians had been killed and 1,100 injured due to heavy fire within the area demarcated as a no-fire zone by the government. The death toll kept rising as the day wore on. "Seeing the number of wounded and from what the people tell me, I estimate the death toll to be around 1,000," said Dr V Shanmugaraja. Early in the morning on May 12, the same hospital, located in the village of Mullivaikal, was hit again...
...Foreign aid is critical to Sri Lanka as it struggles to set up camps with decent food, water and sanitation for tens of thousands of refugees. It will be even more important as the country tries to rebuild the north after nearly 30 years of war. Spending on military pay, pensions and hardware has put a huge burden on Sri Lanka's budget. This year, the government's total tax revenue, after debt servicing, will not be enough to meet its expected spending. And yet the Sri Lankan government has not only refused to accept humanitarian conditions...
...military must first finish a difficult endgame. The remaining Tigers, numbering perhaps in the hundreds, are far outnumbered by the thousands of Sri Lankan soldiers arrayed around them. They could be dealt with within a matter of hours, says Army Commander Lt.-Gen. Sarath Fonseka, if not for the civilians. And so the military is moving cautiously. Military officers near the combat zone say that they believe that Prabhakaran is very close, suspected to be holed up at Vellamullivaikal, deep within the 7-km-long sliver under the Tigers. There is one unspoken fear among them: what will the final...
...Read: "Sri Lanka: Masses Flee, Many Still in Danger...