COLOMBO, Nov 8: Sixty-five civilians were killed and about 300 injured on Wednesday when government forces shelled a refugee camp in eastern Sri Lanka, Tamil rebels and medical sources said.
The bodies of the victims were brought to the Vakarai hospital inside the rebel-held part of Batticaloa following heavy artillery duels, while the wounded were taken to three hospitals in the district, a medical source said.
A spokesman for the rebel Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) said the final toll could rise to 100. The victims were ethnic Tamils who had been displaced by the recent upsurge in shelling in the region.
The Norwegian-led Sri Lanka Monitoring Mission (SLMM) said it had visited the area where a public building sheltering internally displaced persons (IDPs) had been shelled.
“Our monitors have counted 23 bodies, but there could be a lot more,” a spokeswoman for the mission said. “We can confirm that it is an IDP centre that had been hit.” The London-based international rights watchdog, Amnesty International (AI), condemned the attack and demanded an immediate investigation into the massacre.
“It is appalling that the military should attack a camp for displaced people,” AI's Asia Pacific Director Purna Sen said in a statement. “We condemn all attacks on civilians and are particularly saddened and shocked to see such a large-scale attack on civilians just days after the government's announcement of its Commission of Inquiry into human rights abuses.” AI said killing and injuring civilians could not be justified.
“The government must investigate this terrible attack as a matter of urgency. It must ensure that those responsible are brought to justice to signal to the rest of the military that attacking civilians will not be tolerated,” the statement said.
Sri Lanka's defence ministry did not comment on the statements, but suggested that there may have been civilian losses.
“It was what the Tigers wanted-- to cause damages to the innocent Tamil civilians by provoking the army to retaliate for the Tigers' sporadic and indiscriminate shelling,” the ministry said in a statement.
It accused the Tigers of using civilians as human shields to attack government forces in the restive region where both have blamed each other for starting the latest round of artillery duels.
“The Tigers had been planning this situation since the beginning of this month by detaining the innocent civilians in those areas by force to be used as a human shield when the time arises,” the defence ministry statement said.
The Tigers said the attack was timed when the world attention was on Iraq and elections in the United States.
“Is it possible that the Sri Lankan military's intention was to teach the Tamils the lesson that they, the military, can kill refugees in such numbers, and no one can stop them,” the Tigers said.
“The timing of the attack, when the world attention is focused on Iraq's Saddam Hussein and the US elections, must have also been selected to escape any international scrutiny of their methods,” the Tigers said in a statement.
Military spokesman Prasad Samarasinghe said he was not aware of civilian casualties, but confirmed “heavy artillery and mortar bomb exchanges” in Batticaloa district, around 300 kilometres east of Colombo.—AFP
