Aid groups pushed for access to Sri Lanka’s former battlefield to check on the fate of any wounded civilians stranded there, as the country celebrated a holiday yesterday to honor the military’s victory over the Tamil Tiger rebels.
The government has barred journalists and international aid workers from the war zone for months, allowing only the Red Cross to periodically send a boat to the area to deliver food aid and evacuate the wounded.
The Red Cross has appealed for access to the war zone to aid anyone still left there, but the government says it does not need assistance, said Paul Castella, the head of the Sri Lanka office of the International Committee of the Red Cross.
“Yes, we have concerns, yes we are asking for access,” he said. “We have no information from the ground to document these concerns.”
As the military encircled the rebels and pushed ahead with the final battle last week, government doctors reported about 1,000 wounded civilians were trapped in a makeshift hospital and the surrounding area with little food and no medical care.
Military spokesman Brig. Udaya Nanayakkara said troops rescued more than 60,000 civilians caught in the fighting in the final days of the war. He said soldiers found several wounded people when they captured the area, but no one was in the hospital.
“There are no civilians still in that area. All of them have been evacuated,” Nanayakkara said.
Castella said 19 local Red Cross workers along with their families were missing.
“We don’t know where they are and, as you can imagine, we are extremely worried,” he said.
UN humanitarian chief John Holmes has also called for UN officials or the Red Cross to be allowed to go to the former battlefield to confirm that all civilians are out.
Aid groups complained access to those in displacement camps has been severely restricted since the weekend.
Meanwhile, Sri Lankans commemorated the victory over the rebels with a national holiday. The celebrations were relatively subdued after three days of dancing in the streets. Many people cooked pots of milk rice — a traditional celebratory treat — in the streets, handing out samples to passers-by.
Archeologists in Peru on Thursday said they found the 5,000-year-old remains of a noblewoman at the sacred city of Caral, revealing the important role played by women in the oldest center of civilization in the Americas. “What has been discovered corresponds to a woman who apparently had elevated status, an elite woman,” archeologist David Palomino said. The mummy was found in Aspero, a sacred site within the city of Caral that was a garbage dump for more than 30 years until becoming an archeological site in the 1990s. Palomino said the carefully preserved remains, dating to 3,000BC, contained skin, part of the
‘WATER WARFARE’: A Pakistani official called India’s suspension of a 65-year-old treaty on the sharing of waters from the Indus River ‘a cowardly, illegal move’ Pakistan yesterday canceled visas for Indian nationals, closed its airspace for all Indian-owned or operated airlines, and suspended all trade with India, including to and from any third country. The retaliatory measures follow India’s decision to suspend visas for Pakistani nationals in the aftermath of a deadly attack by shooters in Kashmir that killed 26 people, mostly tourists. The rare attack on civilians shocked and outraged India and prompted calls for action against their country’s archenemy, Pakistan. New Delhi did not publicly produce evidence connecting the attack to its neighbor, but said it had “cross-border” links to Pakistan. Pakistan denied any connection to
TRUMP EFFECT: The win capped one of the most dramatic turnarounds in Canadian political history after the Conservatives had led the Liberals by more than 20 points Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney yesterday pledged to win US President Donald Trump’s trade war after winning Canada’s election and leading his Liberal Party to another term in power. Following a campaign dominated by Trump’s tariffs and annexation threats, Carney promised to chart “a new path forward” in a world “fundamentally changed” by a US that is newly hostile to free trade. “We are over the shock of the American betrayal, but we should never forget the lessons,” said Carney, who led the central banks of Canada and the UK before entering politics earlier this year. “We will win this trade war and
Armed with 4,000 eggs and a truckload of sugar and cream, French pastry chefs on Wednesday completed a 121.8m-long strawberry cake that they have claimed is the world’s longest ever made. Youssef El Gatou brought together 20 chefs to make the 1.2 tonne masterpiece that took a week to complete and was set out on tables in an ice rink in the Paris suburb town of Argenteuil for residents to inspect. The effort overtook a 100.48m-long strawberry cake made in the Italian town of San Mauro Torinese in 2019. El Gatou’s cake also used 350kg of strawberries, 150kg of sugar and 415kg of
RSS