Sri Lanka attacks ‘bloodbath’ the UN had feared

THE United Nations yesterday said attacks in Sri Lanka that killed hundreds were the bloodbath it had long feared, while the Tamil Tigers and government traded blame ahead of UN Security Council talks about the war.

In the latest and largest reported assault on civilians trapped in the war zone, hundreds of people were reported killed on Sunday and yesterday in artillery barrages that struck the less than 5sq km (2sq mile) strip of territory the rebels control.

The stakes could not be higher for either Sri Lanka, which does not want its impending conventional victory in the 25-year-war snatched away, or the Tigers, who have vowed “no surrender” despite facing overwhelming numbers, force and odds.

“We’ve been consistently warning against a bloodbath, and the large-scale killing of civilians, including more than 100 children this weekend, appears to show that the bloodbath has become a reality,” UN spokesman Gordon Weiss said.

The United Nations warned in an internal briefing document in March that civilians could be killed either by the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) trying to manufacture a slaughter to blame the government, or in an indiscriminate military advance.

The rebels blamed the government, which in turn said the LTTE had fired on the people it has been holding hostage for months in a last-minute move to secure international pressure for a truce to stave off defeat.

A doctor in the war zone, paid by the government but whose personal safety is at the whim of the Tigers, said at least 433 bodies had been brought to a makeshift hospital, and 1,347 people had been wounded in two days of shelling. “Most of the bodies are in the road, houses and everywhere. In the shelling there should be more dead, around 1,000,” said a man who identified himself as Thurairajah Varatharajan, the senior medical officer.