Aid pullout prompts fears for 200,000 Sri Lankans
Updated
![Fierce fighting in Sri Lanka has forced 200,000 civilians from their homes in the north. [AFP]](http://www.radioaustralia.net.au/img/news/base/slanka_army_afp_0806.jpg?<BR> "Fierce fighting in Sri Lanka has forced 200,000 civilians from their homes in the north. [AFP]")
Fierce fighting in Sri Lanka has forced 200,000 civilians from their homes in the north. [AFP]
International aid workers have evacuated Sri Lanka's north, where government forces are pursuing a major offensive against Tamil Tiger rebels.
The pull-out, demanded by the island's authorities for security reasons, has prompted fears for the fate of tens of thousands of Tamil civilians displaced by the military onslaught.
United Nations figures show up to 200,000 people have been displaced in the past few months.
The Sri Lankan government says its soldiers are just over five kilometres from Kilinochchi, the political capital of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE).
United Nations spokesman Gordon Weiss has told Radio Australia the UN can no longer safely operate in the area.
"The armed forces of Sri Lanka have moved the frontline forward in rather fierce fighting over the past couple of weeks and the fighting has now reached the edges of Kilinochchi, which is where our operations were centred," Mr Weiss said.
"There were aerial bombardments, artillery bombardment, skirmishes to the south of the town, so we've had to move our operations.
"But we're, of course, not facing the kind of things that the civilians are facing which are far worse.
"Those people, and there's now around 200,000, have been forced from their homes by fighting, they are on the move, they're tired, they're hungry, they're worn out, the humanitarian aid reaching them is tenuous at best.
"There's no sign that the fighting will cease in the near future and nor do we have any real indications that they will be moving outside that area of confrontation - they're essentially stuck behind the fighting lines."
Almost all other aid agencies have also evacuated their personnel from the north.
The International Committee of the Red Cross, which supervises a civilian crossing point and carries out body exchanges for the military and the rebels, has been allowed to remain.
UN spokesman Gordon Weiss says the government in Colombo is committed to fulfilling its international obligations to protect civilians, but he says it's going to be tough for those stuck in the area.
"We will see a decline in the wellbeing of that population and just how quickly that decline comes about depends very much on the course of the fighting and how regularly we can reach with them with humanitarian aid," Mr Weiss said.
The LTTE rebels have warned the withdrawal of aid workers will spark a humanitarian crisis and the pro-rebel Tamilnet.com website says two civilians were injured in air strikes on Wednesday.
Gordon Weiss says a crisis won't happen if aid organisations are still able to reach the displaced from outside the area.
"No, I don't think it's a given that if we withdraw from the area there is going to be a humanitarian crisis.
"It will be a crisis if we can't reach that population of 200,000 people with regular humanitarian aid - then we're likely to see people suffering from problems like malnutrition and possible disease outbreaks.
The Asian Human Rights Commission has urged the government to carve out no-conflict zones where civilians could shelter.
"Until this is successfully done all indiscriminate shelling should strictly be avoided," the Hong Kong-based rights group told AFP news agency.
Colombo has poured a record $US1.5 billion into this year's war efforts to crush the rebels, who have been fighting for a separate state in the ethnic-Sinhalese majority island since 1972.
