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		Child victims of the battle to end a bloody civil war   LYING howling on a torn mattress, in a cot by a window overlooking the Sri Lankan ­capital, Colombo, the wounded toddler was a pitiful sight. A female relative fretted, trying to calm the girl down as the medics worked around her. The 18-month-old had been shot in the stomach in the final stages of the fighting in the north-east of the country and there was an ugly line of stitches across her abdomen where doctors had operated to remove the ­bullet. Her right leg was missing a chunk of flesh and had been gashed. The little girl is one of thousands of casualties hidden away from public view in hospitals across Sri Lanka, guarded by soldiers and police who roam the wards. As soon as they are fit enough to be moved, the injured are returned to the grim internment camps that are home to approximately 300,000 people.  See the story as it appeared in print Sri Lanka coverage in full		Gethin Chamberlain is a freelance photojournalist covering South Asia for The Observer. He also writes for a number of other newspapers and magazines, including The Guardian, GQ, Look, News of the World, South China Morning Post and The National. Now based in New Delhi, he previously worked as a foreign correspondent for The Sunday Telegraph and as The Scotsman's chief reporter. He is available for assignments and can be contacted at gethin.chamberlain@gmail.com

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The real Slumdog Millionaires Picture gallery AMID a narrow warren of side streets close to the mosque that dominates the skyline on the edge of the mega-slum of Dharavi, in the heart of Mumbai, a young boy tilts his head back and stares up at the narrow strip of blue which is all that can be seen of the sky. Rickety warehouses crowd in from all sides, their high sheet-metal walls and overhanging asbestos roofs blocking out the sun, plunging the dirt streets below into a gloomy half-light, though it is nearly midday. The National	This is really a disaster. I don't know really how to explain it. At the moment, it is like hell...   "The most terrible thing that I have seen was when a mother had a bullet go through her breast and she was dead and the baby was still on the other side of the breast and the baby was drinking her milk, and that really affected me. I was at that place where it happened...I'm talking to you now, but maybe tomorrow I'll be dead." Vany Kumar, 25, speaking by telephone from a shelled hospital in Sri Lanka's no fire zone.	Saddam's end: tormented as he waited for death Turkey's 'creeping Islamisation' divides nation Kazakhstan is promised democracy, but the election result is not in doubt I no longer have power to save Iraq from civil war, warns Shia leader Tortured screams ring out as Iraqis take over Abu Ghraib Power struggle after PM admits tax cut lies "I hate myself for being part of this war" Afghan army takes fight to Taliban's heartland Czech Cold War survivors on front line Power struggle after PM admits tax cut lies Quelle difference! Hands up if you've lost the plot... Putin rearms his Cold War military Brown under attack for troop deaths and Iraq exit 'It's been 30 years since our daughter was taken Iran spy post heightens Gulf tension with US Mounting civilian toll undoes good deeds of US troops The day Lord West's ship went down Serbia on a knife edge Politics on hold for the partying Bhutto Talk of wedding bells as Sarkozy clangs in the polls Police threaten to shoot lawyers seeking election result Ethnic 'cleansing' threat to Serbs in Kosovo Bloodthirsty and beyond the law: rise of the gun-toting pirates terrorising the seas
Maoist guerrillas threaten Indian poll from their jungle lair   In Dantewada, in the heart of the world's biggest democracy, civil war is flaring, claiming nearly 1,000 lives in the past two years. Gethin Chamberlain reports from the jungle hideouts of the Naxal rebels who are ordering villagers to boycott the election - and whose increasing strength is straining the Indian security services to breaking point.	Where a baby girl is a mother's awful shame THE birth of Rekha's second daughter should have been one of the happiest days of her life. Instead, she lay on the bed of her home on the outskirts of Delhi, the newborn child on the floor, screaming in terror as her mother-in-law poured paraffin over her. This was her punishment, the older woman said, preparing to strike a match: Rekha had failed again to deliver a son and it would be better for everyone if she were dead. Suddenly the door burst open and her neighbours rushed in, roused by the frantic screaming. They bundled Rekha and her daughter out of the house, never to return.
We heard the bullets and then the first shell hit our sandbags   The shell exploded without warning. Kandiah Rasamahendran felt a searing pain in his left leg and looked down, to see blood gushing from the wound. His young sons were screaming, his wife struck dumb with shock. Frantically, he scooped sand from the floor of their makeshift bunker and poured it into the gaping hole, trying to staunch the bleeding. Five hundred metres from the earth bund where the last surviving Tamil Tigers were battling Sri Lankan troops, the family were desperately exposed.	Convert or die, Hindu lynch mobs tell fleeing Christians HUNDREDS of Christians in the Indian state of Orissa have been forced to renounce their religion and become Hindus after lynch mobs issued them with a stark ultimatum: convert or die.
'He turned to the helicopter and sank to his knees, then I hit him with my rockets' Caught in the middle of the Helmand river, the fleeing Taliban were paddling their boat back to shore for dear life. Smoke from the ambush they had just sprung on American special forces still hung in the air, but their attention was fixed on the two helicopter gunships that had appeared above them.	Street beggar to star striker, Raja is India's football hope Rounding the last defender, Raja Chinnaswamy looks up towards the iron frame of the goal in the lee of the white-washed wall of the orphanage behind. He pulls back his right foot and lets fly, sending the ball hurtling past the goalkeeper and out through the gaping hole in the torn netting.
Taking on killers with prayers and a penknife A HERO Brit told last night how he plunged 50ft and broke his back trying to save his girlfriend from the Mumbai murder squad. As gunshots drew closer and flames licked around the corridor outside their third floor hotel room, Will Pike and Kelly Doyle prayed—and knotted sheets together to make a rope to escape out the window.	Burning Bright SWAPAN Haldar had no inkling the tiger was there until it pounced, clamping its jaws around his head and dragging him backwards into the thick mangrove forest. It was the last time anyone saw him alive. “Don’t go,” his wife, Minati Haldar, had begged him. There seemed to be tigers everywhere and they were getting bolder and more aggressive. But Swapan would not be swayed. It was a Saturday morning in January when the crab fisherman set off. His companions returned with his body the following night.
Horses left to starve after Romania bans carts from the roads   RIBS SHOWING clearly through their tattered flanks, the starving horses corralled on the edge of the eastern Romanian city of Galati are just a few days away from death.	Sold for £20: just two of India's million stolen children RAJESH was 14 when he disappeared. Beneath a mop of jet black hair, his clear brown eyes glance sideways out of the picture that is all his family have left of him. He was his parents’ only son and they doted and relied on him. One morning in April last year, his mother, Sunita, asked him to go out to fetch water. She remembers him loading the empty plastic containers on to his cart and setting off cheerfully down the lane. It was the last time she saw him.
'Two of us fled. 75 other women killed themselves with grenades'   By the time Arulmathy and her fellow Tamil Tigers realised they were surrounded, it was too late. They had fallen asleep and now Sri Lankan soldiers were swarming into their bunker. Arulmathy watched aghast as 75 women she had fought beside for so many months reached for their hand grenades, pulled the pins and blew themselves to pieces, as they had been ordered to do.	Turkey's 'creeping Islamisation' divides nation It could have been a scene from any beach in Turkey: a cluster of young women reclining on sun-loungers, soaking up the midday rays, thumbing through novels and smoking cigarettes, while fellow holidaymakers splashed in the sea.
Damage caused during theft is no stain on the value of The Scream EDVARD Munch's most famous painting, The Scream, is damaged beyond repair. Four years after it was stolen in an armed raid on an Oslo museum, and two years after Norwegian police found it, scratched and water-damaged, conservators have told The Sunday Telegraph there is nothing more they can do to restore what is undoubtedly one of the most recognisable paintings in the world.	Round-the-world couple fight pirates of the Caribbean A BRITISH businessman and his wife have told how they were attacked and robbed by armed pirates as they sailed through the Caribbean on a round-the-world adventure. Peter Lee, 61, rammed his pursuers in a bid to knock them off their boat as it came alongside his 41ft yacht but the pirates managed to scramble on board after firing several shots at him. The couple's dog then furiously attacked the men, biting and snapping at them, until one of them shot and stabbed the animal between the shoulder blades, leaving him for dead.
'I'm only 16. They gave me a rifle. It was heavy. They said we had to go forward. If we came back, they would shoot us'   Tamil children as young as 11 were forced at gunpoint to fight for the Tigers in Sri Lanka's civil war. Survivors talked of their ordeal to Gethin Chamberlain in Ambepusse.	Tamils trapped in internment camps tell of desperate hunt for loved ones The three children standing in the dirt outside the tent in Sri Lanka's newest internment camp have not seen their mother for weeks, ever since a shell exploded next to the bunker where they had taken cover, ripping a hole in her stomach.

Special reports	Sri Lanka	Iraq	Afghanistan	Darfur

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In this cat-and-mouse war, the sniper is king MARK Harvey was the first of the snipers to react, dropping to his knee and fixing the man carrying the RPG in his sights, one shot, a moving target, the man dropping like a stone, dead before he hit the ground.	Litany of rape and abuse in Darfur region ONE man held her arms, others held her legs. They took it in turns to rape her. It lasted six hours. When the baby is born in four months time she will keep it. But a part of her will always think of it as her Janjaweed child.	Caught in the middle as Amarah explodes "I want this moving now, now, now," he screamed, and there was another burst of gunfire overhead. Then they were there, the Warriors, with their 30mm cannon and chain guns, appearing over the crest of the bridge, just as the cavalry should.
Hope dies for Africa's lost generation CAROL Singwoma is weaving her way through the crowd, the eyes of the men on her dirty white knitted turtle-neck top and the little skirt covering her thin legs.	'The blast left the soldier on his back, staring at the mess of his leg' STRUGGLING TO sit up, Frederic Couture surveyed his torn trouser leg and the bloodied strips of flesh which were all that remained of his foot. A landmine had exploded, blowing the rest of it away. "I'm 21-years-old and I've lost my foot,'' he cried. "What am I going to do now?'	Death at a checkpoint AHMED'S head is turned away to one side, his mouth open, the blood which streaks his face already dry. His right hand is by his side, the left curled across his stomach. The fingers stop a few inches from the inch-wide hole just above his groin.
Red hackles rise as the Black Watch stride out TAM O'SHANTER on his head, pistol in his belt, the commanding officer of the Black Watch is striding ahead through the crowded market place in the centre of the town of Az Zubayr.	Suicide and suffering grip Europe's nation of orphans ROMANIA counts the cost of closer ties to the West as thousands of children are left behind while their parents search for work.	They poured out of their Warriors and let fly with grenades, guns, everything It was just after dawn yesterday morning when the Warrior crashed through the wall of the house tucked away down a side road in the Iraqi town of Al Zubayr.
Shallow grave is testimony to Sudan's lies THE grave is just a mound of earth, no more than two feet high at its peak and 10ft in diameter. It lies about 50 yards from the edge of the village of Nami in North Darfur. The nine bodies buried had lain on the ground for more than a week before the Janjaweed finally left the village and the people who had escaped the killing felt brave enough to return.	The sisters who took on the IRA and won THE men's toilet in Magennis's bar in central Belfast is not a large room. There is a small sink to the right of the door on the way in, a single stall to the rear of the room containing a WC, and a stainless steel trough on the same wall as the sink, with room for two people. There are a couple of adverts on the wall above the trough; below it is the obligatory puddle of urine on the floor. In the chipped brown varnish on the back of the door, the initials PIRA - standing for Provisional Irish Republican Army - have been scratched.	Gordon Brown weds today: Exclusive Chancellor Gordon Brown will today end his long bachelor years and wed long -time girlfriend Sarah Macaulay. The man who has made prudence his by-word has finally decided to throw caution to the wind amid amazing secrecy. But he finally came clean last night after The Daily Record discovered the banns posted at his local registrar's office
Friendly fire Robina ud Din was a picture of misery. When American soldiers opened fire on her family's car at a checkpoint in the eastern town of Khost, glass fragments ripped open her left eye. The US military said the vehicle failed to stop when told to do so. But her family - who had been returning from her father's funeral - said soldiers opened fire without warning.	'We are tired of firing at people – get us out of here’ It was as astonishing an admission as any that has emerged from the lips of a British officer in the four and a half years since the tanks rolled over the Iraqi border. The British Army, said the man sitting in a prefab hut in Britain’s last base in the country, were tired of fighting.	Murdered Polish nurse came to the UK looking for a better life It was in the little notes she wrote home to her family in Poland that Magda Pniewska revealed the silent anguish behind the smiling face of a young woman who had travelled to Britain in search of a better life. "I wish I could be back home with you," Magda wrote to her parents in the little town of Brzeg. "I love you, I miss you."

Copyright ©2009 Gethin Chamberlain. All rights reserved.