Batticaloa doctors protest against Karuna Group

[TamilNet, Thursday, 01 April 2004, 12:21 GMT]
Doctors at the Batticaloa teaching hospital protested Thursday against the Karuna Group for forcing Jaffna Tamils to leave the troubled eastern district. Eleven doctors from Jaffna, including six consultants who were working in the Batticaloa teaching hospital, left the district in the early hours of Thursday with Police escort. Hundreds of Jaffna Tamils fled the eastern town after armed cadres of the Karuna Group threatened and ordered them to leave Batticaloa on Tuesday night.

Meanwhile miscreants backed by the Karuna Group attacked and damaged a shop in Batticaloa town owned by a Jaffna businessman Wednesday night Police said.

“Medical services for the ordinary people of Batticaloa would be severely affected due to this unpardonably foolish move by the Karuna Group”, lamented a doctor who protested in the hospital premises Thursday against what he described as "the Karuna Group's regional cleansing atrocities".