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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.

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Selection

Eyewitness to carnage

The young mother was standing by the side of the road, clutching her baby. The baby was dead. Damilvany Gnanakumar watched as she tried to make a decision. Around them, thousands of people were picking their way between bodies strewn across the road, desperate to escape the fighting all around them.

'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.

Sri Lankan guards 'sexually abused girls' in Tamil refugee camp

A British medic held for months in an internment camp for Tamil civilians has revealed how military guards dealt out cruel punishments, while many suspected of links to Tiger rebels were taken away and have not been seen since

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In squalid internment camps, the fight for survival goes on amid reports of 15,000 killed

The first accounts of the suffering of civilians during the final stages of the war in Sri Lanka began to emerge from the camps where as many as a quarter of a million Tamils are being held behind barbed wire. Men and women described how they were shot at by the Tamil Tigers as they tried to escape the so-called no-fire zone and how a hospital was repeatedly shelled inside an area designated by the government as a safe zone.

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.

Thousands of trapped Sri Lankan civilians pour through breach in Tamil Tiger lines

Tens of thousands of civilians trapped by fighting in Sri Lanka fled to safety today after the military smashed through one of the Tamil Tigers' last major defensive lines. Video footage released by the Sri Lankan defence ministry showed civilians pouring through a breach in an earth barrier which the rebels had been using to hold back the military onslaught.

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'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.

Eyewitness account: 'Hospital is paralysed by shelling'

Cluster bombs and artillery shelling have killed many civilians at a makeshift hospital within the last strip of Sri Lanka's coastline still controlled by the Tamil Tigers, a doctor said today.

Makeshift Sri Lanka hospital is shelled, taking 47 lives

At least 47 people were killed today and more than 50 injured when a shell struck the last hospital inside the so-called no-fire zone in north-eastern Sri Lanka, where casualties of the country's brutal civil war are being treated.

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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.

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.

Refugee tide threatens to overwhelm camps in Sri Lanka, says UN

Unicef said today it faced a "human avalanche" of destitute people in Sri Lanka as the country's military entered an established no-fire zone and freed 3,000 civilians trapped between the army and Tamil Tiger rebels

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"My face and clothes were splattered with the blood of this boy. I never knew blood was warm."

SOPIKA had only ever known war. It had always been there, part of the scenery, part of her very existence. Yet for the first nine of her 10 years, it had seemed to visit only those on the edges of her life. Now, as the bullet passed through the body of the young boy ahead of her on the edge of the lagoon on the north east coast of Sri Lanka where she and her family had sought refuge from the killing, it finally found her. In the darkness, she felt a sudden dampness on her face and on her clothes as the boy's blood splashed onto her.

Tamil civilians slaughtered as army shells 'no-fire zone'

Hundreds of civilians are being killed or seriously injured in artillery and gun attacks as the Sri Lankan army attempts to finish off the last Tamil Tiger rebels trapped in a shrinking pocket of land.

Release her: urgent plea for British medic held in war zone

A British woman who was working at a hospital helping victims of Sri Lanka's civil war has been interned in one of the island's detention camps, prompting her family to plead for urgent diplomatic help to secure her immediate release.

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Civilians held in Sri Lanka camps face disease threat

Thousands of civilians fleeing fighting in Sri Lanka have been interned by the government in cramped, makeshift camps with overflowing drains, water shortages and the threat of disease looming large in the sweltering, unsanitary conditions.

Sri Lanka rebels forcing children to fight, UN says

Children as young as 12 are being given guns and forced to fight on the frontline alongside desperate Tamil Tiger rebels cornered inside Sri Lanka's no-fire zone, the UN said today. Those forcibly recruited included the 16-year-old daughter of a member of the UN staff, who had stayed inside the narrow strip of coast where the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) are making their last stand.

Monsoon threatens Sri Lankan refugees with 'humanitarian disaster', warns UN

Tens of thousands of detained refugees from the war in Sri Lanka are threatened by the imminent arrival of monsoon rains in the north of the country, according to an internal United Nations document.

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Prisoners of peace: hundreds of thousands face two years trapped in Sri Lankan camps

Priority is to find Tamil Tigers, says government: UN concern grows over 'shocking' conditions.

Audio: Tamil Tigers routed

"As a conventional force, they are finished..."

Gethin Chamberlain on the bloody end of Sri Lanka's 26-year conflict

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UK's role in Tamil leaders' failed surrender bid

British say involvement was indirect at most: Two were killed despite cautious negotiations

Audio: 'The ceasefire doesn't work and the fighting continues'

Gethin Chamberlain on Sri Lankan government saying it won't use artillery against the Tamil Tigers.

Archive

'Hundreds dead' on bloodiest day of Sri Lankan battle to destroy Tamil Tigers

Hundreds of civilians are reported to have been killed when the Sri Lankan army launched a concerted assault on an area it had just designated as a safe zone.

Fighting rages in Sri Lanka despite pledge to shelve heavy weapons

Heavy fighting erupted again today in the narrow coastal strip in northern Sri Lanka where tens of thousands of civilians remain trapped, the day after the government in Colombo announced it was ending the use of heavy weapons.

'More than 1,000 civilians killed' in attacks on Sri Lanka safe zone

A doctor working inside the no-fire zone in Sri Lanka today told the Guardian that more than 1,400 people were believed to have been killed in two days of air and artillery attacks.

Women killed and children kidnapped as Tamil Tiger remnants suffer brutal revenge

Reports of bodies found in camp with throats cut: Paramilitaries abducting children, say observers

Sri Lanka snubs Tamil Tigers' ceasefire offer as fears grow for civilians trapped in no-fire zone

150,000 people believed to be caught in conflict area Call to suspend fighting is a gimmick, claim ministers

Sri Lanka war: Nearly 6,500 Tamil civilians killed, says UN

The United Nations says nearly 6,500 civilians have been killed and 14,000 wounded in fighting in Sri Lanka over the last three months, according to a UN document circulated among diplomatic missions.

Hundreds of civilians killed or wounded in Sri Lankan no-fire zone, says Red Cross

Hundreds of civilians have been killed or injured in the Sri Lankan army's attempt to wipe out the remaining Tamil Tiger fighters cornered in the narrow strip of coastline designated as a no-fire zone, the Red Cross said yesterday.

Army declares end to war as rebel chief killed

Military sources say Tamil Tiger commanders dead: EU urges Colombo to let UN groups in to care for refugees : Fears that guerrilla attacks may continue.

Hospital shelled in Tamil no-fire zone

AT least 20 people were killed and nearly 300 injured yesterday when a hospital in the last area of Sri Lanka held by the Tamil Tigers was shelled in what one doctor described as the worst day of bloodshed since the start of the military campaign.

Sri Lanka rejects UN ceasefire call to free citizens

Sri Lanka yesterday rejected a call by the UN for a ceasefire in its military campaign against the Tamil Tigers, insisting it would not be trapped into letting the group's leaders escape.

At least 128 reported dead in Sri Lanka's 'no-fire zone'

At least 128 civilians have died and more than 700 have been injured in three days of shelling in the last remaining pocket of Tamil Tiger resistance in Sri Lanka, according to reports from inside the "no-fire zone".

Sri Lankan forces move to encircle rebels as international anger grows

Tamil Tigers accused of using phosphorus bombs: Red Cross warns of humanitarian catastrophe

Fears grow for safety of doctors who reported civilian slaughter

Fears are growing for the safety of the doctors who acted as the eyes and ears of the world during the Sri Lankan army's final assault on the Tamil Tigers's last stronghold in the north-east of the country.

Sri Lankan army shot surrendering rebels, rights group says

A devastating report into the final months of Sri Lanka's brutal civil war claims government forces carried out a politically-motivated massacre of surrendering Tamil Tiger fighters.

UN official calls for inquiry on 'unacceptably high' civilian death toll in Sri Lanka

Many thousands died in final days, says diplomat: Army 'used heavy weapons in no-fire zone'

Trapped Sri Lankans 'dying in makeshift hospital'

Doctors treating refugees injured in intense fighting plead for evacuations and medical aid.

Sri Lankan army claims 'total victory' over Tamil Tigers

Fears are growing for the safety of up to 80,000 civilians still trapped with the remaining rebels in an isolated coastal strip.

Tamils tell of escape as Sri Lanka war intensifies

Desperate Tamil civilians are trying to flee to India in small boats to escape intensifying fighting between the Sri Lankan military and Tamil Tigers.

Sri Lanka vows to free 130,000 Tamil refugees

Sri Lanka today bowed to international pressure and announced plans to close the internment camps that are home to more than 130,000 people locked up since the end of the country's bitter civil war six months ago.

The Tamil Tigers are defeated, The Observer magazine, 27 Dec 2009

British medic and former hostage Damilvany Kumar recalls the horror of captivity under government forces, and her fears for the future



Sri Lanka
Featured	Pictures

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. ------------------------------------------------------------------------
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Selection
Eyewitness to carnage The young mother was standing by the side of the road, clutching her baby. The baby was dead. Damilvany Gnanakumar watched as she tried to make a decision. Around them, thousands of people were picking their way between bodies strewn across the road, desperate to escape the fighting all around them.	'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.	Sri Lankan guards 'sexually abused girls' in Tamil refugee camp A British medic held for months in an internment camp for Tamil civilians has revealed how military guards dealt out cruel punishments, while many suspected of links to Tiger rebels were taken away and have not been seen since
.
In squalid internment camps, the fight for survival goes on amid reports of 15,000 killed The first accounts of the suffering of civilians during the final stages of the war in Sri Lanka began to emerge from the camps where as many as a quarter of a million Tamils are being held behind barbed wire. Men and women described how they were shot at by the Tamil Tigers as they tried to escape the so-called no-fire zone and how a hospital was repeatedly shelled inside an area designated by the government as a safe zone.	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.	Thousands of trapped Sri Lankan civilians pour through breach in Tamil Tiger lines Tens of thousands of civilians trapped by fighting in Sri Lanka fled to safety today after the military smashed through one of the Tamil Tigers' last major defensive lines. Video footage released by the Sri Lankan defence ministry showed civilians pouring through a breach in an earth barrier which the rebels had been using to hold back the military onslaught.
.
'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.	Eyewitness account: 'Hospital is paralysed by shelling' Cluster bombs and artillery shelling have killed many civilians at a makeshift hospital within the last strip of Sri Lanka's coastline still controlled by the Tamil Tigers, a doctor said today.	Makeshift Sri Lanka hospital is shelled, taking 47 lives At least 47 people were killed today and more than 50 injured when a shell struck the last hospital inside the so-called no-fire zone in north-eastern Sri Lanka, where casualties of the country's brutal civil war are being treated.
.
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.	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.	Refugee tide threatens to overwhelm camps in Sri Lanka, says UN Unicef said today it faced a "human avalanche" of destitute people in Sri Lanka as the country's military entered an established no-fire zone and freed 3,000 civilians trapped between the army and Tamil Tiger rebels
.
"My face and clothes were splattered with the blood of this boy. I never knew blood was warm." SOPIKA had only ever known war. It had always been there, part of the scenery, part of her very existence. Yet for the first nine of her 10 years, it had seemed to visit only those on the edges of her life. Now, as the bullet passed through the body of the young boy ahead of her on the edge of the lagoon on the north east coast of Sri Lanka where she and her family had sought refuge from the killing, it finally found her. In the darkness, she felt a sudden dampness on her face and on her clothes as the boy's blood splashed onto her.	Tamil civilians slaughtered as army shells 'no-fire zone' Hundreds of civilians are being killed or seriously injured in artillery and gun attacks as the Sri Lankan army attempts to finish off the last Tamil Tiger rebels trapped in a shrinking pocket of land.	Release her: urgent plea for British medic held in war zone A British woman who was working at a hospital helping victims of Sri Lanka's civil war has been interned in one of the island's detention camps, prompting her family to plead for urgent diplomatic help to secure her immediate release.
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Civilians held in Sri Lanka camps face disease threat Thousands of civilians fleeing fighting in Sri Lanka have been interned by the government in cramped, makeshift camps with overflowing drains, water shortages and the threat of disease looming large in the sweltering, unsanitary conditions.	Sri Lanka rebels forcing children to fight, UN says Children as young as 12 are being given guns and forced to fight on the frontline alongside desperate Tamil Tiger rebels cornered inside Sri Lanka's no-fire zone, the UN said today. Those forcibly recruited included the 16-year-old daughter of a member of the UN staff, who had stayed inside the narrow strip of coast where the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) are making their last stand.	Monsoon threatens Sri Lankan refugees with 'humanitarian disaster', warns UN Tens of thousands of detained refugees from the war in Sri Lanka are threatened by the imminent arrival of monsoon rains in the north of the country, according to an internal United Nations document.
.
Prisoners of peace: hundreds of thousands face two years trapped in Sri Lankan camps Priority is to find Tamil Tigers, says government: UN concern grows over 'shocking' conditions.	Audio: Tamil Tigers routed "As a conventional force, they are finished..." Gethin Chamberlain on the bloody end of Sri Lanka's 26-year conflict
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UK's role in Tamil leaders' failed surrender bid British say involvement was indirect at most: Two were killed despite cautious negotiations	Audio: 'The ceasefire doesn't work and the fighting continues' Gethin Chamberlain on Sri Lankan government saying it won't use artillery against the Tamil Tigers.