Thousands of Sri Lankan Tamil refugees fled their camp in rebel territory in the island’s east on Thursday, survivors said, a day after the army bombed the location killing dozens of civilians.
Rights groups and diplomats voiced outrage at Wednesday’s attack, which the military said was in retaliation for rebel fire, while doctors tended infants and elderly among at least 125 civilians with multiple shrapnel wounds.
Many fear a new chapter in a two-decade civil war will escalate after peace talks collapsed in late October.
Palachchenai Kadiraveli (29) managed to board a fishing boat with her daughter and 20 others before dawn on Thursday, escaping across a lagoon patrolled by navy attack boats to government-held territory.
”There were a lot of explosions, so many people dead and wounded,” she told Reuters after landing near the town of Valachchenai in government territory in the eastern district of Batticaloa. ”A lot of children died.
”I jumped into a bunker with my daughter,” she said, clutching two bags containing clothes and a bottle of soda. ”My husband stayed behind to protect our belongings. There are thousands of people trying to leave.”
Nordic truce monitors said they had received reports that thousands of people were on the move in the rebel-held area — where around 35 000 people are camped out after being displaced
by fighting which flared further north in August.
Struggling to cop
Doctors at Valachchenai’s basic hospital struggled to cope with 60 wounded early on Thursday, so the patients were moved to the major town of Batticaloa.
The Tigers say 47 people were killed in Wednesday’s attack on the camp, set up in a school in the rebel-held village of Kathiraveli. Nordic truce monitors had counted 23 corpses by late Wednesday.
”Our monitors saw there were no military installations in the camp area, so we would certainly like some answers from the military regarding the nature and reasons of this attack,” said Sri Lanka Monitoring Mission spokeswoman Helen Olafsdottir.
The attack came after days of artillery duels between the military and the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) in the island’s north and east, where the rebels want to carve out a separate homeland for minority Tamils.
The rebel-endorsed Tamil National Alliance protested outside United Nations offices in Colombo, waving banners which read ”Down with state terrorism” and ”Government of Sri Lanka, stop killing Tamil civilians”. – Sapa-AP