Tragedy of civilians as international mechanism backs out

[TamilNet, Monday, 09 February 2009, 12:33 GMT]
Eight died and forty injured among fleeing civilians, reportedly caused by a human bomb according to news released by Sri Lankan military Monday. 15 military personnel also died and 24 injured in an 'IDP rescue centre' north of Visuvamadu, the military said. There were children among the dead as seen in the video released by the Sri Lankan military. The US Embassy in Colombo was quick to condemn the LTTE, based entirely on the Sri Lankan military version of the story.

What exactly happened is difficult to be asserted since no independent source is available in the war frontier to verify the claims or the sequence of the tragedy.

There are reports that nearly 4000 civilians were forcibly chased towards the side of the military by a unit of SLA which came near the side of the safety zone.

Everyone including the civilian side, international humanitarian agencies, international media and several countries, except only the Colombo government, have been demanding all these times for an International Rescue Mission and independent monitoring agencies.

However, no power in this earth is being able to materialise that.

"Such a tragedy of the already suffering civilians could have been averted easily by the presence of an effective International Rescue Mission," said a Colombo based NGO official.

For nearly three weeks now, when the Sri Lanka Army has been deliberately firing artillery at civilian targets and at hospitals, using cluster shells and killing even patients to the full knowledge of the ICRC, the international agencies didn't know 'from where the shells were coming'.

There were no comments or condemnation from the US Embassy either for the virtual genocide that was going on and is continuing to this hour.

Chronology: