Word: sri
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Rageswari, a 40-year-old mother of three in northern Sri Lanka, had been running from bullets, shell fire and artillery fire for more than a year. But last week she and thousands of other Tamil civilians had nowhere else to run, caught between the Tamil Tigers and the advancing Sri Lankan government forces working to retake all the land that has been under rebel control since early 2008. Her village, Periyatampanei, was once part of a vast swath of Tiger territory, but upon the first signs of danger last March, she and her family moved deeper into Tiger-held...
...Tiger units had also moved into the zone, the government accused the Tigers of firing at troops from within the safe zone. Aid agencies have reported fighting within the zone in recent weeks. "No one is safe inside the safe zone,"says Neil Buhne, the U.N. humanitarian coordinator in Sri Lanka. "The Tigers are conscripting to fill depleted cadre levels, the military is advancing and civilians in close proximity face extreme danger...
...Sri Lankan government estimates some 15,000 civilians are still trapped in the war zone; the U.N. says the number could be as high as 50,000. And food and medicine have been in short supply on the Tigers' side of the line. "For a family of four, they would give rations sufficient for two," Rageswari said, three days after fleeing the fighting while meeting a group of journalists flown in by the Sri Lankan military to Putumattalan, about a kilometer (half a mile) from the frontline...
...Five-star hotels some 155 miles (250 km) away in Colombo have made available their kitchens and staff to cook meals that are then airlifted to refugees. Sri Lankan Foreign Minister Rohita Bogollagama appealed for help last week, asking "our friends in the international community" to provide emergency relief aid "initially by way of semipermanent shelter, water purification plants, sanitation facilities and medical assistance...
...UNHCR, are airlifting emergency supplies to the island nation over the weekend. The U.S. and France have pledged field hospitals while the European Union has committed $22 million in assistance. But the U.N. last week warned that the response to its emergency appeal in February for $155 million for Sri Lanka had brought in less than a third of that amount by the time thousands of civilians began flooding into refugee camps last week...