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Red Cross reveals another hospital shelling

— Photo: AFP

Worst-affected: This picture released by Sri Lanka’s Ministry of Defence on Wednesday shows displaced civilians leaving LTTE-held areas.

COLOMBO: The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) has revealed that it was forced to shift 240 sick and wounded persons from the Putumattalam hospital in Wanni on Tuesday after the facility was hit by shelling which killed 16 patients. The military maintained it was not responsible for the attack.

ICRC, the only independent organisation which has a presence in the Wanni, has been in the eye of a storm following statements from senior government functionaries taking exception to what has been termed as the Committee’s “unusually strong statements” on the humanitarian situation in the war zone.

Last week, hours after erstwhile member of the Janatha Vimukthi Perumuna Wimal Weerawansa accused the ICRC local head of presenting an “exaggerated picture” of the plight of those stranded in the war zone and demanded his deportation, the ICRC main office in Colombo was attacked.

The ICRC operation at Putumattalan started after the government and the LTTE granted safe passage. An additional 160 patients still in Putumattalan would be evacuated on Wednesday.

“We are shocked that patients are not afforded the protection they are entitled to,” said Paul Castella, head of the ICRC delegation in Colombo.

The ICRC is negotiating with both parties to continue the evacuation of sick and wounded from the Wanni. “Medical facilities are no longer functioning. There are a few makeshift medical points, but these cannot cope with the increasing influx of patients,” said Mr. Castella. “Urgent medical evacuations must continue to take place regularly.”

Separately, refuting reports in a section of the media that the ICRC had placed orders for 35,000 body bags the Committee said it placed a routine order for 2,000 body bags in January this year of which 1,000 were handed over to the Security Forces Headquarters in Vavuniya following their verbal request. A further 500 body bags were ordered that same month to replenish ICRC stocks.

In its role as a neutral intermediary, the ICRC has been transferring bodies between the government and the LTTE for years. In 2008, the organisation transferred 912 bodies.

Separately, Reports Without Borders, in a statement, said it was dismayed to learn the BBC World Service felt obliged on Wednesday to stop supplying news programmes in English, Sinhala and Tamil to Sri Lankan state broadcaster SLBC for local FM retransmission.

In a letter addressed to Information Minister Anura Priyadarshana Yapa, the organisation charged that BBC had decided to suspend its programme because the government was constantly and illegally censoring them despite being bound by a commercial contract.

The BBC World Service, in a statement in London, announced that: “We have no choice but to suspend broadcasts until such time as SLBC can guarantee our programming is transmitted without interference.”

Meanwhile, the military claimed that over 2,200 civilians had crossed over to liberated areas from LTTE territory.

In another development, the LTTE, in its first formal statement in the last three weeks, denied that the woman suicide bomber who exploded outside a refugee camp three days ago killing 20 soldiers and ten civilians was a “Tiger human bomb” .

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