Sri Lankan hospital shelled for ninth time – CNN
Posted by Ajith on February 4, 2009
A hospital caught in the middle of fierce fighting between government forces and Tamil rebels in northern Sri Lanka has been shelled for a ninth time in four days, the International Committee of the Red Cross told CNN Wednesday.
The heaviest of the shelling happened on Sunday, when the facility was hit six times. Since then, Pudukkudiyiruppu hospital in the Vanni region has been hit once each on Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday, according to the ICRC’s Sarasi Wijeratne in Colombo, Sri Lanka.
The shelling of the hospital has left at least 14 people dead and 10 wounded, the ICRC said.
Government forces and Tamil rebels are locked in a battle for the remaining rebel strongholds in northern Sri Lanka, where the country’s ethnic Tamil minority has been fighting for an independent homeland since 1983. Each side accuses the other of firing on the hospital.
The Sri Lanka military told CNN on Monday that it knows the coordinates of the hospital and wouldn’t have fired on it. The army also says the rebels are running low on ammunition and are firing shells indiscriminately in desperation, suggesting one of those could have hit the hospital.
A nurse at the hospital, meanwhile, accused the military of attacking civilians in a video provided by the Tamils Rehabilitation Organization, a group closely allied with the rebels.
Civilians “were attacked by the military, aerial bombing, and many have been deeply wounded and affected,” said Dayani Ponnaiya, who identified herself as a nursing officer. “Many civilians have died, have lost hands and legs. Even children have been injured.”
International humanitarian aid agencies have asked for increased access to the region, calling conditions in northern Sri Lanka a nightmarish situation.
The fighting has kept aid from reaching the hospital and has chased away doctors and nurses, Ponnaiya said, adding that many people have died as a result.
“People’s lives have to be protected,” she said. “Unless you are here to listen to their cries, you [won't] know their suffering.”
Government officials, meanwhile, have accused aid organizations and foreign media of sensationalizing civilian casualties.
“It looks as if it’s convenient for certain agencies to exaggerate the numbers so that this can be converted to a humanitarian crisis in the public eye,” Secretary of Foreign Affairs Dr. Palitha Kohona told CNN earlier this week.
Humanitarian groups say as many as 250,000 unprotected civilians are trapped in the area where the fighting is taking place.
Sri Lankan President Mahinda Rajapaksa has promised to allow safe passage to trapped civilians and urged the Tamil Tigers, as the rebels are commonly known, to promise the same.
http://edition.cnn.com/2009/WORLD/asiapcf/02/04/sri.lanka.fighting
SB said
International media channels & Agencies are saying the number of civilians trapped in Mulattivu is more than 250,000. All this in an area not more than 230sq.km & when Sri Lanka’s total Tamil population itself is 2.4million.
There is also much uproar over deaths of children without exploring the possibility that these children may have been part of the LTTE’s child soldier brigade. Something that human rights advocates cannot deny as the UN Secretary-General’s Special Representative for Children and Armed Conflict, Ms. Radhika Coomaraswamy, said in a press release on January 21, 2009, that the LTTE needs to immediately release children held in its ranks.
The images the CNN relayed were provided by the Tamil Rehabilitation Organization (TRO) – this organization is a front organization of the LTTE & is banned in the US & Sri Lanka & has been omitted from the UK Charity Listing for siphoning billions of tsunami funds to the LTTE instead of building houses for tsunami victims.
The TRO doesn’t function in the North and has been closed since 2006…
While the death or injury to a single civilian cannot be accepted, those who make these reports should promote their statements with proper evidence.