Sri Lankans face humanitarian crisis trapped in "no fire zone", warns UN by The Guardian / AFP/ BBC News 5:10pm 4th Mar, 2009   23 March 2009    Sri Lankans face humanitarian crisis trapped in "no fire zone", warns UN. (The Guardian)    More than 150,000 people are being shelled daily and are running short of water and medicine in a Sri Lankan-government declared "No Fire Zone", according to witness reports and United Nations briefing documents obtained by the Guardian.    Tens of thousands of people are caught between the last 1,500 fighters of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) and the advancing troops of the Sri Lankan army. The civilians are trapped on a thin strip of land 5 square kilometers on Sri Lanka"s north-east coast.    The UN warns that if people stay they risk being killed by government shells and if they try to leave they will be in danger of being shot by the Tigers. Diplomats say there is a real danger that a bloody denouement to the 25-year-old civil war could result in an "all-out humanitarian catastrophe".    Sri Lanka has ignored calls for a ceasefire. UN figures show there are more than 60 deaths a day due to army bombardment and more than 3,000 lives have been lost since the end of January.    The doctor in charge of the makeshift hospitals in the No Fire Zone, T Sathiyamoorthy, told the Guardian that civilians were being "repeatedly shelled for no reason". The army"s bombardment had seen bodies pile up in the safe zone - and local staff of aid agencies working in the government safe zone were among the dead.    "We have been hit this morning ... 52 people were injured, there were also deaths. I have seen hundreds of dead people," said Dr Sathiyamoorthy, who is a regional director of health services.    "We are living in bunkers. My home was bombed early in the morning." Patients were sleeping on mats on the floor of the hospital building. "There"s a severe shortage of medicines. We only have 10% of what we need. The government are not ready to send medicines to the area. Contaminated water is a big problem here."    There are only three rudimentary medical facilities now operating in the No Fire Zone, and the UN says they are dealing with 5,000 patients a day. In an operational note to aid agencies, the UN said supplies of food, clean water and medicines were running perilously short. It calculates the population urgently needs another 2,500 tonnes of food in the next month and an extra 1.5m litres a day of water.    UN high commissioner for human rights, Navi Pillay, said that the actions by the warring parties "may constitute violations of international human rights and humanitarian law"... "We know enough to be sure that the situation is absolutely desperate. The world today is ever sensitive about such acts that could amount to war crimes and crimes against humanity."    She said credible sources had told the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) more than 2,800 civilians might have been killed, including hundreds of children, and more than 7,000 injured since January 20.    Many of the casualties were inside areas designated as safe "no-fire" zones by the government, the OHCHR said.    Civilians still trapped    "The current level of civilian casualties is truly shocking, and there are legitimate fears that the loss of life may reach catastrophic levels if the fighting continues in this way," the high commissioner said.    4 March 2009    The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) has warned of an impending humanitarian catastrophe in north-eastern Sri Lanka.    The ICRC"s Jacques de Maio said the situation was one of the worst disasters he had experienced.Mr de Maio, head of operations for South Asia, said it would be possible "quite easily to avoid all of the unnecessary suffering and death which is taking place right now, and to allow for an immediate and massive evacuation".    He said it should also be possible to allow "significant and meaningful humanitarian assistance" into the war-affected areas. Some aid has arrived in recent weeks, but the government has allowed in far less than is needed, the ICRC says.    Aid workers have spoken of desperate scenes where there has been contact with those civilians. In one place, the ICRC has succeeded in landing a boat to take off the wounded. About 2,000 people have been taken off this beach, but many more have been left behind.    Mr de Maio described the complex moral choices being made by those deciding who should be saved. "When we reach the beach with the ferry there are exchanges of fire, there are thousands of people on this beach, they are stranded on basically sand and salty water," he said.    "When we evacuate them, our people have to select the ones eligible... meaning we have to exclude many others. And this is very difficult to handle for people on the ground."    The ICRC has been lobbying European governments to exert pressure to improve the humanitarian situation.
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