Da The Guardian del 27/04/2006
Originale su http://www.guardian.co.uk/international/story/0,,1761988,00.html

Thousands in Sri Lanka flee bombing raids

· Air force mounts reprisal strikes after suicide attack
· Civil war fear as Tamil Tiger naval bases are hit

di Jonathan Steele

Colombo - Up to 40,000 people fled their homes yesterday after the Sri Lankan air force mounted reprisal bombing raids on Tamil Tiger naval bases for a second day. Local officials said they were moving into the jungle north of the eastern port city of Trincomalee.

United Nations refugee officials confirmed a large exodus but gave no figures. "We have not yet had access to the area," said Amin Awad, a UNHCR official. "We want access and have called for a halt in hostilities."

The government air and artillery strikes followed a suicide attack on Sri Lanka's army commander on Tuesday, leaving the island closer to a full-scale resumption of civil war than at any time for four years. The military said the Tigers were firing mortars into government-held areas.

Even before the latest escalation of fighting the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE), who want self-government for the mainly Tamil areas, pulled out of peace talks that had been expected to resume in Geneva this week.

Monitors from Norway, which brokered a ceasefire in 2002, flew to Trincomalee yesterday to assess the damage and urge both sides to stop attacks. Ulf Henricsson, the Swedish head of the Nordic monitoring team, said the ceasefire was still valid despite the hostilities. "No one has abrogated it," he said. "What is going on is a serious violation of the agreement."

The Tigers said government forces had fired at least 150 artillery shells. They asked the monitors "to clarify whether the Sri Lanka army has launched a full-scale war", the LTTE's website TamilNet said, quoting the Tigers' Trincomalee commander, S Elilan.

"There are many people urgently needing medical attention, but we can't transport them because the roads are closed," he added. He said he had appealed to the International Committee of the Red Cross to help evacuate three critically wounded civilians to hospitals in government-held areas, but had received no assistance.

The army commander, Lieutenant General Sarath Fonseca, was in a critical condition in a Colombo hospital yesterday after a woman pretending to be pregnant deceived guards at military headquarters and detonated a bomb as his car drove past, killing at least eight people as well as herself. Lt Gen Fonseca was considered a hardliner who felt the government was not doing enough to respond to ambushes on vehicles and boats carrying soldiers and sailors. More than 100 have died in four months.

The LTTE claimed 12 people had been killed in the government air strikes. The government said that as well as the suicide bombing, the Tigers had attacked Sri Lankan navy craft. "Our navy units have come under terrorist attack this morning and we have retaliated," Brigadier Prasad Samarasinghe, a military spokesman, said.

Both the government and the LTTE insisted they were still willing to go to Geneva. An LTTE official said the Tigers' eastern leaders had been prevented by the government army from going to the movement's headquarters in the north for consultations before Geneva, but government officials denied obstruction, saying they had a seaplane on standby to take the LTTE officials to their headquarters in Killinochi.

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