Artillery shelling kills 64 in Sri Lanka hospital

Artillery shells hit a makeshift hospital in Sri Lanka’s northern war zone today, killing at least 64 civilians, a government doctor said.

The rebel-linked TamilNet website accused government forces of shelling the hospital at Mullivaaykkaal.

Military spokesman Brig Udaya Nanayakkara denied the accusation, saying soldiers were only using small arms as they pushed forward to seize the remaining territory held by separatist Tamil Tigers along a small coastal strip in the island’s northeast.

A government health official said at least 64 patients and bystanders were killed in two artillery attacks that hit the hospital today.

Another 87 people were wounded, said the official.

TamilNet said the shells struck on Friday and today. It gave the same casualty toll as the health official.

The hospital is inside rebel-held territory but is run by government doctors.

The artillery attacks came amid growing international concerns over the fate of the estimated 50,000 civilians trapped in the war zone, following a UN report that nearly 6,500 civilians were killed in the last three months.

International pressure has grown for a ceasefire between the government forces and Tamil rebels to protect the trapped civilians.

The government has rejected calls for a ceasefire, saying its troops are on the verge of ending the quarter-century civil war.

The government forces have ousted the rebels from all their strongholds in recent months and cornered them in a three-mile strip along the north-eastern coast.

The government and rights group accuse the rebels of holding the civilians as human shields.

The various claims are difficult to verify because most journalists and independent observers are barred from the conflict zone.

The Tamil Tigers, listed as a terrorist group by many western nations, have been fighting since 1983 for an ethnic Tamil state in the north and east after decades of marginalisation by governments dominated by the Sinhalese majority.