The UN’s humanitarian chief was due in Sri Lanka yesterday as international concern over civilians trapped in the island’s warzone fueled a White House call for an immediate ceasefire.
John Holmes’ three-day mission would focus on pushing the government to facilitate humanitarian missions in and around the conflict zone and to allow proper access to tens of thousands of displaced civilians, the UN said.
The plight and suffering of those caught in the fighting between government troops and Tamil Tiger rebels prompted US President Barack Obama’s administration on Friday to urge an end to hostilities.
PHOTO: REUTERS
“We call on both sides to stop fighting immediately and allow civilians to safely leave the combat zone,” the White House said in a statement.
The Sri Lankan government has so far resisted all calls to halt an offensive that is now on the brink of wiping out the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam, or LTTE, who have been fighting for an independent Tamil homeland since 1972.
The Tigers, once one of the most feared guerrilla organizations in the world, have seen their territory shrink to a sliver of land on the northeast coast estimated to measure 10km².
The White House specifically demanded an end to any military shelling in a designated “safe zone” and access for aid groups and journalists to civilians who have escaped.
A British surgeon working for Medecins Sans Frontieres, Paul McMasters, said his team in the state-run hospital in Vavuniya, near the conflict zone, had been overwhelmed by the influx of injured civilians.
“It’s so crowded that the nurses cannot physically walk around the ward,” he said, estimating the number of patients in a 45-bed ward at around 320.
“There are simply too many people to treat them all. We are not able to save some people because we need to provide more aftercare,” he said.
“There are simply not enough nurses,” he added.
The LTTE issued their own call for foreign intervention, warning of “imminent” starvation among civilians and even suggesting that the situation could deteriorate into a crisis as appalling as that in the Darfur region of Sudan.
It is not clear how many people are trapped in the small rebel-held area. The UN has estimated 50,000, while the government says 15,000 to 20,000 and the Tigers insist the real figure is 165,000.
UN figures released on Friday showed that Sri Lanka’s civil war was killing civilians in greater numbers than the Gaza conflict earlier this year, indicating that almost 6,500 ethnic Tamils had been killed in the last three months.
Two UN officials privately confirmed that 6,432 civilians had died, with 14,000 injured, since the end of January. At least 2,000 people are understood to have been killed in the last month but the death toll does not include those killed in this week’s intense fighting.
The UN has declined to publicly release its casualty figures, but the numbers indicate that, with 500 dying every week, the toll is heavier than it was in Gaza, where a three-week conflict left 1,400 dead. The Sri Lankan government has faced far weaker international censure for its offensive against the Tamil Tigers than Israel did for its war in Gaza.
Colombo denies allegations — supported by credible witness evidence from aid agencies and Tamil civilians — that hundreds of innocent people have been killed by the army in heavy shelling.
The government insists soldiers are only lightly armed and are trying to rescue trapped people. In the propaganda war that has accompanied the crisis the Tamil Tigers have also denied allegations that they were holding civilians hostage as human shields.
PARLIAMENT CHAOS: Police forcibly removed Brazilian Deputy Glauber Braga after he called the legislation part of a ‘coup offensive’ and occupied the speaker’s chair Brazil’s lower house of Congress early yesterday approved a bill that could slash former Brazilian president Jair Bolsonaro’s prison sentence for plotting a coup, after efforts by a lawmaker to disrupt the proceedings sparked chaos in parliament. Bolsonaro has been serving a 27-year term since last month after his conviction for a scheme to stop Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva from taking office after the 2022 election. Lawmakers had been discussing a bill that would significantly reduce sentences for several crimes, including attempting a coup d’etat — opening up the prospect that Bolsonaro, 70, could have his sentence cut to
A powerful magnitude 7.6 earthquake shook Japan’s northeast region late on Monday, prompting tsunami warnings and orders for residents to evacuate. A tsunami as high as three metres (10 feet) could hit Japan’s northeastern coast after an earthquake with an estimated magnitude of 7.6 occurred offshore at 11:15 p.m. (1415 GMT), the Japan Meteorological Agency (JMA) said. Tsunami warnings were issued for the prefectures of Hokkaido, Aomori and Iwate, and a tsunami of 40cm had been observed at Aomori’s Mutsu Ogawara and Hokkaido’s Urakawa ports before midnight, JMA said. The epicentre of the quake was 80 km (50 miles) off the coast of
China yesterday held a low-key memorial ceremony for the 1937 Nanjing Massacre, with Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) not attending, despite a diplomatic crisis between Beijing and Tokyo over Taiwan. Beijing has raged at Tokyo since Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi last month said that a hypothetical Chinese attack on Taiwan could trigger a military response from Japan. China and Japan have long sparred over their painful history. China consistently reminds its people of the 1937 Nanjing Massacre, in which it says Japanese troops killed 300,000 people in what was then its capital. A post-World War II Allied tribunal put the death toll
A passerby could hear the cacophony from miles away in the Argentine capital, the unmistakable sound of 2,397 dogs barking — and breaking the unofficial world record for the largest-ever gathering of golden retrievers. Excitement pulsed through Bosques de Palermo, a sprawling park in Buenos Aires, as golden retriever-owners from all over Argentina transformed the park’s grassy expanse into a sea of bright yellow fur. Dog owners of all ages, their clothes covered in dog hair and stained with slobber, plopped down on picnic blankets with their beloved goldens to take in the surreal sight of so many other, exceptionally similar-looking ones.
RSS