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UN condemns Sri Lankan 'bloodbath'
(Agencies)
Updated: 2009-05-11 20:18

UN condemns Sri Lankan 'bloodbath'
Injured Tamil civilians are seen in this picture released by the pro-Tiger rebel group www.vannimission.org on May 10, 2009, at which they claim is a makeshift hospital inside the "No Fire Zone" in northern Sri Lanka. [Agencies] 

UN figures compiled last month showed that nearly 6,500 civilians had been killed in three months of fighting this year as the government drove the rebels out of their strongholds in the north and vowed to end the war.

Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International and other rights groups called on Japan, the largest international donor to Sri Lanka, to press the UN to urgently address the civil war here.

"Formal meetings of the Security Council must be held urgently so that the council can take the necessary measures to address the humanitarian and human rights crisis," the groups said in a letter to Japan's prime minister.

About 50,000 civilians are crowded into a 2.4 mile-(4 kilometer) long strip of coast along with the separatists, who have been fighting for 25 years for a homeland for minority Tamils.

The government has brushed off international calls for a humanitarian truce, saying any pause in the fighting would give the rebels time to regroup.

Shanmugarajah said the hospital was so short-staffed that many of those wounded in the first barrage late Saturday had still not been treated Monday morning. "The hospital death rate is increasing, but we are helpless," he said.

People were begging the doctors to send them away on a Red Cross ship that comes every few days to evacuate the wounded, saying they could not bear the shelling anymore.

The rebel-linked TamilNet Web site blamed the attack on Sri Lankan forces. Rights groups have accused them of bombing and shelling the war zone despite pledges to stop using heavy weapons.

The Sri Lankan military denied firing the artillery and said they witnessed rebels firing mortar shells from one corner of the coastal strip into another section heavily populated with civilians for one hour Sunday morning.

"I think the LTTE (Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam) is now trying to use these people as their last weapon to show the world that the army is firing indiscriminately and stop this offensive," military spokesman Brig. Udaya Nanayakkara said.

Human rights groups have accused the rebels of holding the civilians as human shields and shooting some who tried to flee.

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