Attack kills hundreds of Sri Lanka civilians
COLOMBO, Sri Lanka – The United Nations called the killing of hundreds of ethnic Tamil civilians in a weekend artillery attack in northern Sri Lanka a “bloodbath” amid reports today that the war zone was heavily shelled for a second straight night.
The initial artillery attack – which lasted from Saturday evening into Sunday morning – killed at least 378 civilians and wounded more than a thousand more, according to a health official inside rebel-controlled territory.
A rebel-linked Web site blamed the attack on the government, while the military accused the beleaguered Tamil Tigers of briefly shelling their own territory to gain international sympathy and force a cease-fire.
About 6 p.m. Sunday, a new round of shelling pounded the area, according to a government health official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak to the media.
The TamilNet Web site said many more civilians were killed in the second attack and that the death toll from the two days of violence was likely in the thousands.
Reports of the fighting are difficult to verify because the government bars journalists and aid workers from the war zone, but the U.N. confirmed a heavy toll from the first attack over the weekend.
That attack marked the bloodiest assault on ethnic Tamil civilians since the civil war flared again more than three years ago. Health officials said a hospital in the war zone was overwhelmed by casualties, and the death toll was expected to sharply rise.
“The U.N. has consistently warned against the bloodbath scenario as we’ve watched the steady increase in civilian deaths over the last few months,” U.N. spokesman Gordon Weiss said today. “The large-scale killing of civilians over the weekend, including the deaths of more than 100 children, shows that that bloodbath has become a reality.”
U.N. 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.
About 50,000 civilians are crowded into the 2.4 mile-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.