http://www.reuters.com/article/asiaCrisis/idUSCOL422962
UN protests Tamil Tiger refusal of safe passage
By Ranga Sirilal
COLOMBO, Jan 22 (Reuters) - The United Nations said on Thursday Tamil Tiger rebels had violated international law for refusing to allow local staff and their families to leave Sri Lanka's war zone.
The Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) are now cornered in less than 400 sq km (155 sq mile) in northern Sri Lanka along with what aid agencies say are about 230,000 people trapped between the separatists and a Sri Lankan military onslaught.
Both the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) and the United Nations have raised fears for the safety of civilians with troops converging on the LTTE's last big outpost with the aim of finishing the 25-year-old war once and for all.
They have urged the Tigers to let people leave and the military to avoid all civilian casualties.
On Thursday, the United Nations in Sri Lanka in a statement said it had "issued its strongest possible protest to the LTTE for their refusal to allow U.N. national staff and dependents" to leave the war zone in a convoy.
"The LTTE's denial of safe passage is a clear abrogation of their obligations under international humanitarian law," the statement said, adding that the convoy had been stuck in the war zone since Jan. 16.
The LTTE could not be reached for comment.
Rights groups say the Tigers have forced civilians to stay in the war zone as a human shield to slow the offensive, as they have in the past while raising a cry over civilian casualties to try and build international pressure for a truce.
The rebels have denied that.
EVACUATION CONVOY
Later on Thursday, the ICRC said it had facilitated the transfer of 46 sick and wounded people from a hospital in the war zone, near Puthukudiyiruppu, to a government hospital far from the fighting at Vavuniya.
One of those was an army soldier with a head injury captured by the LTTE, ICRC spokeswoman Sarasi Wijeratne said. She did not say how the wounded had been injured.
The military on Wednesday announced a 32 sq km safe zone near the rebels' last big redoubt, the eastern port of Mullaittivu, and dropped leaflets urging civilians to go there quickly.
On Thursday, pro-rebel website www.TamilNet.com reported that shelling had killed 66 civilians and wounded 176 in the past 60 hours in areas including the safe zone and the hospital.
Military spokesman Brigadier Udaya Nanayakkara denied that.
"Today we stopped firing and took 46 patients from that hospital through the Red Cross, so that kind of humanitarian operation is underway. We didn't fire into the safe zone because we wanted civilians to come," Nanayakkara said.
It is impossible to get a clear picture because both sides bar independent media from the war zone, and have frequently distorted battlefield figures to their advantage in the past.
Nanayakkara also said soldiers had found an underground bunker complex with radio gear, an auditorium and maps marked with military positions, believed to be a main command centre abandoned by the Tigers.
With many expecting the army to finally end one of Asia's longest-running wars, speculation has mounted that leader Vellupillai Prabhakaran has fled, possibly to southeast Asian nations the LTTE has used as gun smuggling bases. [ID:nKLR409026]
Malaysia and Thailand have been reported as possibilities.
"We are tightening security checkpoints at airports and along the coast," said a Malaysian police official, who declined to be identified in line with policy. "We are not taking any chances with him, so we will be constantly monitoring."
Prabhakaran is wanted by Interpol and the LTTE is listed as a terrorist organisation by India, the United States, the European Union and others.
The LTTE say they are fighting to create an independent state for minority Tamils, many of whom complain of mistreatment by successive governments since the Sinhalese ethnic majority took over at independence from Britain in 1948. (Additional reporting by Niluksi Koswanage in Kuala Lumpur; Writing by Bryson Hull; Editing by Sugita Katyal)
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