COLOMBO, March 18: Sri Lanka’s navy rescued more than 640 people who fled the war zone in a flotilla of 35 small boats as Tamil Tiger rebels fired, the military said on Wednesday, but tens of thousands remained trapped.
The military has cornered the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) in 28 square kms of the Indian Ocean island’s northeast, and is battling to deal a final blow to their 25-year separatist rebellion.

At least 18 more rebels were killed in the latest clashes in the shrinking war zone, a military official said Wednesday.
The UN children’s agency UNICEF in a statement overnight said hundreds of children were among the 2,800 civilians who were killed in the fighting, and warned that many more were still at risk. The government calls the figures unsubstantiated.

The United Nations said last week the Tigers were forcibly holding thousands of people inside the war zone and making them fight or build defences.

The LTTE said people are staying out of choice. Nearly 44,000 have fled so far this year, almost 5,000 of them since Saturday.

On Wednesday, 643 people in 35 small boats escaped a no-fire zone after navy sailors chased away LTTE boats that were firing on them, military spokesman Brigadier Udaya Nanayakkara said.

The Tigers could not be reached for comment.

Nanayakkara said troops had recovered the bodies of 18 Tamil Tigers on Tuesday, and that fighting raged again on Wednesday.

Medical officials said in a letter to the health ministry that hundreds of deaths due to wounds and serious diseases could have been prevented if more medical supplies and facilities had been available.

The regional health directors for Mullaitivu and Kilinochchi districts had been forced to move their facilities across northern Sri Lanka as the Tigers forced the civilian population flee with them when the army advanced.

“More than 500 civilian deaths, either on or after admission, were registered at the hospitals and thousands of civilian deaths could have gone unrecorded as they were not brought to the hospitals,” the letter said.

The health ministry confirmed the letter’s authenticity and said there may be a drug shortage because of the difficulty of bringing in supplies, which are brought in a large ferry and then carried ashore in small boats amid the fighting.—Reuters