COLOMBO: Rare images of suffering civilians trapped in Sri Lanka’s war zone emerged yesterday: Dead parents still cradling their children. A teenage boy with no arms crying in despair. A severely crowded hospital with many patients lying on mats under already full beds.
The photographs and video footage of scores of dead and wounded, which were handed to The Associated Press by independent observers traveling in the war zone, are a glimpse of the some 250,000 civilians trapped in the shrinking jungle battle zone as Sri Lanka tries to finally crush the Tamil Tigers after a 25-year war.
The images emerged as the hospital in the war zone — one of the last functioning health institutions inside rebel-held territory — shuddered under a second day of shelling, leaving two patients dead. As many as 11 were killed in the shelling Sunday.
When alerted to the video and photographs, military spokesman Brig. Udaya Nanayakkara reiterated “No civilians have been killed” in the fighting. “There may be civilians injured, not due to shelling. But they may be injured because they have been employed on the construction of (rebel) defenses. Civilians maybe have been injured due to crossfire,” he said.
Sri Lanka’s president again declared yesterday the army is on the verge of crushing the ethnic separatist Tamil Tigers. Journalists and aid groups have been barred from traveling to the war zone, but independent observers shot the video footage and photographs over the past week and provided them to The Associated Press. The observers did not wish to be identified because they feared government retaliation.
One photo from the town of Udayarkattu, inside a government-declared “safe zone” in rebel-held territory, showed family members apparently killed in their sleep by artillery Jan. 23, according to one of the observers who took the photograph. The mother and father lay dead on mats on the floor, still cradling their two children between them.
The government announced Jan. 21 that it was establishing a “safe zone” on the edge of rebel-held territory that it would not attack. Local health officials and human rights groups say the area has repeatedly come under attack in the past two weeks.
Video footage showed a hospital in the war zone packed with severely injured people. Many were forced to lie on mats underneath beds because of overcrowding.
Young boys and girls had legs amputated. An elderly woman missing her right leg lay on the floor. A teenage boy with no arms cried in despair, while an elderly man lay on a nearby bed with one leg amputated above the knee and the other below it.
In recent months, the Sri Lankan Army has wrested all major towns once controlled by the Tigers, who are now defending a 300-square kilometer pocket of mostly jungle.
“The strongholds of terror once believed to be invincible ... have fallen in rapid succession, bringing the final elimination of terror from our motherland and the dawn of true freedom to all our people well within our reach,” President Mahinda Rajapaksa said in a message to mark the 61st Independence Day that will be celebrated tomorrow.
As the military pressed ahead, civilians continued to suffer. The hospital in Puthukkudiyiruppu was hit with several artillery shells on Sunday and yesterday, Red Cross spokeswoman Sarasi Wijeratne said. In total, 11 people were killed and 26 wounded. The Red Cross spokeswoman and Tharmakulasingham couldn’t say who fired the shells.
