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May 16, 2009
U.N. Envoy Arrives in Sri Lanka
By MARK McDONALD and SHARON OTTERMAN
Ignoring calls to relent in the face of what the International Committee of the Red Cross called “an unimaginable humanitarian catastrophe,” the Sri Lankan military said Friday that its forces had squeezed Tamil rebels onto about a mile-long strip of land in heavy fighting.
Flanked by the sea and a briny lagoon, and with the army advancing from north and south, its units just a mile or so apart, the rebels appeared to be nearly cornered.
President Mahinda Rajapaksa said in a speech on Thursday that government forces could seize the rebels’ last remaining refuge within 48 hours, the Defense Ministry reported.
As Sri Lankan soldiers closed in on the few hundred rebels who remained on the boggy beachfront, concerns mounted over what the United Nations said were at least 50,000 civilians still trapped in the combat zone.
The director of operations for the Red Cross, Pierre Krahenbuhl, said relief workers were blocked for a fourth day from helping civilians escape and from delivering emergency food aid.
A Web site used by the rebels, who are formally called the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam, or L.T.T.E., said that an estimated that 1,700 civilians had been killed since Tuesday, although it was impossible to verify that claim.
Many of those trapped have literally gone to ground, seeking protection in hand-dug bunkers and under ruined buildings. More than 5,000 managed to leave the area in the last few days, said the military spokesman, Brig. Udaya Nanayakkara Nanayakkara, according to The Associated Press.
Photographs released by the military showed entire families, women and children, escaping on inner tubes that floated past rows of coiled razor wire, The A.P. said.
They now add to some 200,000 civilians who have been displaced by the fighting in recent months and are being contained in government camps.
A senior United Nations envoy arrived in Sri Lanka Friday to try to persuade the government to agree to a cease-fire.
The envoy, Vijay Nambiar, who is chief of staff to the United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon, was due to meet with senior officials in Colombo, Sri Lanka’s capital.
A United Nations spokeswoman said Mr. Ban was also considering a trip to Sri Lanka, at the invitation of Mr. Rajapaksa.
The government has consistently rejected those calls in the past, despite appeals from the United Nations, human rights groups, the United States and other Western nations.
In an apparent effort to increase the pressure, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton told reporters that it was “not an appropriate time” for the International Monetary Fund to consider a $1.9 billion loan request by Sri Lanka.
She suggested the United States would effectively block the loan “until there is a resolution of the conflict.” Some human rights groups say the rebels are using civilians in the conflict zone as human shields, and that heavy artillery shelling from government forces was being conducted without sufficient regard for civilian safety.
The government has denied using mortars, artillery and heavy weapons, but satellite images taken May 10 and analyzed independently have found what appear to be new heavy impact craters in the war zone.
Some 7,000 civilians were killed and 16,700 wounded from Jan. 20 until May 7, the Associated Press reported, citing a United Nations document provided a senior diplomat, who it did not name.
Since then, some 1,000 more civilians were killed in a week of heavy shelling, The A.P. said, citing reports from doctors in the war zone.
Sharon Otterman reported from New York, and Mark McDonald from Hong Kong.