Military breaches Tiger defence as SLankans flee
Updated
After a quarter of a century, Sri Lanka's separatist war is entering its final stage, with the military saying it has now cut the last strip of territory held by Tamil Tiger insurgents in the northeast of the country in two.
The government has demanded the rebels surrender after its troops breached a huge earthen defence, allowing tens of thousands of civilians held in the territory to flee. Aerial pictures show people on the move, carrying whatever they can.
Presenter: Barney Porter
Speaker: Easan Ketheesan, relative of Sri Lankan fleeing fighting; Gordon Weis, spokesman for the United Nations in Sri Lanka; James Elder from the UN's children's fund UNICEF; Mark Schneider, the senior vice-president of the International Crisis Group
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BARNEY PORTER: Easan Ketheesan came to Australia as a 14-year-old. He's just spoken to an uncle in the war zone.
EASAN KETHEESAN: It was a very short conversation, it was about 40 seconds.
Unfortunately he's screaming and crying out, and there's a lot of people were killed on that day.
And it's just basically everywhere they walk it's just dead body, and people, and a lot of them were kids this time.
And he's just crying and he's screaming out there, and a lot of people can hear it in the background crying out, and also the explosion and ground noises still going on in the background.
And he couldn't talk for long, and he just cut off.
BARNEY PORTER: Before the latest exodus, estimates of the number inside the Tamil pocket in the north ranged from 60,000 to as many as 150,000.
Gordon Weis is the spokesman for the United Nations in Sri Lanka. He's told the BBC the breaching of the rebels' defence wall by Government troops has been a lifeline for many civilians.
GORDON WEIS: It's an indication, if one were needed, that most civilians inside that pocket are anxious to leave. The conditions there are unbearable; they've been there for about three months.
They're on this sand spit, which is really just a sand spit, surrounded by sea water and a brackish lagoon. They have been really without much in the way of food, water, or medical care, all the while being bombed and shelled as a result of the fighting between LTT (Liberation Tigers of Tamil) forces and government forces.
BARNEY PORTER: But James Elder from the UN's children's fund UNICEF says the rebels have been stopping others from leaving.
JAMES ELDER: We've seen in the last month, two months, hundreds of children killed.
They are bearing the brunt of a conflict that is clearly not theirs.
Now, this is now hitting a very critical moment, so of course our fear is that we will see more and more children killed as the fighting intensifies.
That's obviously an unacceptable scenario, but it nonetheless is a scenario.
BARNEY PORTER: For decades, the Tigers have vowed no surrender in their fight to create a separate state for the country's minority Tamils, in what's been described as Asia's longest-running civil war.
Tamil communities around the world are holding demonstrations against the Sri Lankan Government offensive, amid reports of the shelling and aerial bombardment of civilians.
Police in Paris have arrested 210 people, while thousands more pro-Tamil demonstrators have marched to Britain's Houses of Parliament.
But Mark Schneider, the senior vice-president of the International Crisis Group, says neither side in the conflict can claim the moral high ground.
MARK SCHNEIDER: Well, at this point what you have is you have a fundamental humanitarian tragedy, and even though the Tamil Tigers have nothing to argue for them, they've carried out suicide bombings and other disastrous actions, and currently using their own, if you will, ethnic group - the Tamil community - as human shields.
Nevertheless, the Government clearly should not be firing shells or mortars into the zone knowing that there will be civilians that will undoubtedly die in the process.
