About 3,000 Tamil civilians have braved flooded, mine-laden jungle paths to flee from separatist fighting into government-held areas in eastern Sri Lanka, officials and witnesses said.
Sri Lankan female soldiers also helped one of the refugees give birth to a boy at a military checkpoint, the military reported yesterday.
"We have set up camps and are trying to provide all facilities to these people who are escaping from the clutches of the terrorists," military spokesman Brigadier Prasad Samarasinghe said on Saturday, referring to Tamil Tiger separatist rebels.
PHOTO: AP
Refugees who fled the area on Friday by sea said that they had been forcibly taken by the rebels, but had sneaked out when the guerrillas were distracted during artillery and gunfire exchanges with government troops.
The government accuses the rebels of holding civilians as human shields, a claim the Tigers deny.
On Friday, the UN urged the rebels to let tens of thousands of Tamil civilians leave.
The government said on Saturday that 17 camps had been set up and some schools had been turned into refugee centers.
There was no immediate comment from the rebels.
Calls to their headquarters in Kilinochchi remained unanswered yesterday.
Yesterday Samarasinghe said Sri Lankan women soldiers at a military checkpoint helped a fleeing Tamil woman named Latha give birth.
Like some Tamils, Latha uses a single name.
"Our soldiers noticed the woman in pain and called our women soldiers, who realized that she was in a very advanced stage of pregnancy," Samarasinghe said.
Samarasinghe said that Latha had become separated from her husband, Udaya Kumaran, as they fled, but that he had since been tracked down at another refugee camp and reunited with his family.
The refugees were fleeing rebel-held Vaharai village in eastern Batticaloa District, where there has been heavy fighting between government troops and Tigers in the past few weeks.
The UN call to let civilians leave came after boats carrying fleeing ethnic Tamil civilians capsized on Friday in the eastern sea, killing at least eight people, according to the Sri Lankan military.
The pro-rebel Web site TamilNet said as many as 18 were feared to have died.
The rebels claim the government has sealed the only road out of the area.
Some of the refugees did use the road on Saturday, but many did not, saying that they feared shelling.
Waterlogged jungle paths made the escape difficult.
One refugee said he had to abandon his belongings to wade through waist-deep water.
The military said that 2,790 civilians fled from rebel-held areas on Saturday.
``The total number of escapees, who were dismayed with the threats and harassment of the Tiger terrorists, is now 13,910 since Nov. 1,'' the Media Center for National Security said.
The UN said on Thursday that the 35,000 people trapped in Vaharai by the fighting were suffering under indiscriminate shell attacks.
The Tamil Tigers have been fighting the government since 1983, demanding a self-ruled homeland for Sri Lanka's 3.1 million minority Tamils, citing decades of discrimination by the majority Sinhalese-dominated state.
A Norwegian-brokered ceasefire officially still holds, but more than 3,500 fighters and civilians have been killed in renewed fighting this year.
More than 65,000 people died in the conflict before the ceasefire.
DISASTER: The Bangladesh Meteorological Department recorded a magnitude 5.7 and tremors reached as far as Kolkata, India, more than 300km away from the epicenter A powerful earthquake struck Bangladesh yesterday outside the crowded capital, Dhaka, killing at least five people and injuring about a hundred, the government said. The magnitude 5.5 quake struck at 10:38am near Narsingdi, Bangladesh, about 33km from Dhaka, the US Geological Survey (USGS) said. The earthquake sparked fear and chaos with many in the Muslim-majority nation of 170 million people at home on their day off. AFP reporters in Dhaka said they saw people weeping in the streets while others appeared shocked. Bangladesh Interim Leader Muhammad Yunus expressed his “deep shock and sorrow over the news of casualties in various districts.” At least five people,
It is one of the world’s most famous unsolved codes whose answer could sell for a fortune — but two US friends say they have already found the secret hidden by Kryptos. The S-shaped copper sculpture has baffled cryptography enthusiasts since its 1990 installation on the grounds of the CIA headquarters in Virginia, with three of its four messages deciphered so far. Yet K4, the final passage, has kept codebreakers scratching their heads. Sculptor Jim Sanborn, 80, has been so overwhelmed by guesses that he started charging US$50 for each response. Sanborn in August announced he would auction the 97-character solution to K4
SHOW OF FORCE: The US has held nine multilateral drills near Guam in the past four months, which Australia said was important to deter coercion in the region Five Chinese research vessels, including ships used for space and missile tracking and underwater mapping, were active in the northwest Pacific last month, as the US stepped up military exercises, data compiled by a Guam-based group shows. Rapid militarization in the northern Pacific gets insufficient attention, the Pacific Center for Island Security said, adding that it makes island populations a potential target in any great-power conflict. “If you look at the number of US and bilateral and multilateral exercises, there is a lot of activity,” Leland Bettis, the director of the group that seeks to flag regional security risks, said in an
ON THE LAM: The Brazilian Supreme Court said that the former president tried to burn his ankle monitor off as part of an attempt to orchestrate his escape from Brazil Former Brazilian president Jair Bolsonaro — under house arrest while he appeals a conviction for a foiled coup attempt — was taken into custody on Saturday after the Brazilian Supreme Court deemed him a high flight risk. The court said the far-right firebrand — who was sentenced to 27 years in prison over a scheme to stop Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva from taking office after the 2022 elections — had attempted to disable his ankle monitor to flee. Supreme Court judge Alexandre de Moraes said Bolsonaro’s detention was a preventive measure as final appeals play out. In a video made
RSS