Al-zakir
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Reuters, COLOMBO
Jan 23: Nearly 100 civilians have been killed in artillery exchanges between Sri Lanka's military and Tamil Tigers since the weekend, a top government official working in the area controlled by the rebels said on Thursday.
The report of casualties came on a day the United Nations said the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) had violated international law by stopping its local staff and their families from leaving the war zone in an aid convoy.
That echoed earlier complaints from human rights watchdogs that said the separatist rebels had forced civilians to stay in the war zone as human shields and forced conscripts.
The rebels, on U.S., E.U. and Indian terrorist lists, deny that.
Sri Lanka's military has boxed the LTTE into an area of less than 400 square km (155 sq miles) after the most successful campaign so far in the 25-year war and is aiming to deliver a final blow to the last rebel redoubt, the port of Mullaitivu.
Aid agencies have warned that about 230,000 refugees are trapped and at risk of being caught in the crossfire.
"Around 30 people died in the morning today. Personally I saw that nearly 100 people have died from Saturday up to today. More than 300 have been injured," Mullaittivu District Government Agent Emelda Sukumar told Reuters by phone.
Getting independent confirmation of casualties in the war zone is nearly impossible.
Sukumar, who spoke from Mullaittivu, is in charge of government services including humanitarian aid in the rebel area.
The national government pays her salary, but she is under the LTTE's watch and relies on them for her safety. For that reason, the government has often said its agents are under duress and liable to publicly give a version of events favorable to the LTTE.
Sukumar said the army ceased fire after her office got in touch with them and the Red Cross, which arranged a convoy to ferry 46 sick and wounded people from a hospital near Mullaittivu to a government hospital in Vavuniya, far from the battle.
Meanwhile, assailants on motorbikes attacked and wounded a Sri Lankan newspaper editor and his wife as they drove to work Friday morning, authorities said, the latest in a string of assault on journalists in Sri Lanka.
The government, which has been accused of turning a blind eye to the violence or even orchestrating it, announced it would create a special police team to find out who is behind the attacks, Media Minister Anura Yapa said.
"We totally condemn this type of attack, and we will do everything possible to find the culprits," he said.
In the latest attack, four people on motorbikes blocked Upali Tennakoon's car near his home outside Colombo as he and his wife were heading to work at the independent Rivira weekly newspaper, police spokesman Ranjith Gunasekera said.
The assailants repeatedly stabbed the couple, he said.
Dr. Prasad Ariyawansa, a doctor at Colombo National Hospital, said Tennakoon was treated for lacerations to his hands and forehead and his wife had some lacerations as well.
The assault came two weeks after assailants on motorcycles gunned down Lasantha Wickrematunge, the editor of a paper that is harshly critical of the government.
His killing, just two days after a private TV station was shot up by gunmen armed with grenades, prompted a wave of international criticism against Sri Lanka over the safety of journalists. No arrests have been made in the killing.
The government has also been criticized for arresting journalists critical of its policies and its war on ethnicTamil rebels.
On Friday, Human Rights Watch called on the government to drop charges against J.S. Tissainayagam, an ethnic Tamil journalist who was arrested in March and indicted five months later under an anti-terrorism law for two articles he wrote about issues confronting Sri Lanka's minority Tamils.
"Tissainayagam's arrest was politically motivated and his detention has involved a litany of due process violations," said Brad Adams, the New York-based group's Asia director. "The prosecution of journalists only reinforces the impression that the government has embarked on a systematic campaign to smother free media."
:: The Daily Independent Bangladesh :.. Internet Edition
