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Thousands of Tamils flee across mine-laden jungle

Ethnic Tamil refugees who have fled from the rebel-held village of Vaharai in eastern Batticaloa District arrive at a collection area in Reditenna, about 210km northeast of Colombo on Saturday. Some 3,000 Tamil civilians braved flooded jungle paths strewn with mines to flee from separatist fighting into government-held areas. PHOTO: AP

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.

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.
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