Sri Lanka guilty of ‘ humanitarian disaster’

Aid workers accused Sri Lanka yesterday of causing an avoidable humanitarian disaster as the country’s Government appealed for international help in handling 100,000 civilians who have fled the conflict with the Tamil Tigers since Monday.

The Government had maintained for weeks that there were fewer than 50,000 civilians in the area where the army has pinned down the last of the Tigers.

It insisted that UN and Red Cross estimates of 100,000 to 150,000 civilians in the zone were exaggerated — and prepared internment camps to screen non-combatants based on its own figures.

The army now says that it has rescued 103,000 civilians from the area since Monday — on top of 70,000 already in the camps — and estimates that there are up to 20,000 still inside the zone