It's Tragic When Civilians Ruin A Perfectly Good Artillery Barrage

by Michael Bear · 2009-05-03 23:03:00 UTC
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Just came across an interesting article from Saturday's New York Times: Tamils Say Sri Lankan Military Shelled Hospital.

Interesting, seeing as how just last week the Sri Lankan military promised - seriously this time, no jokes, we mean it - to stop firing heavy weapons into their own, self-declared "no-fire zone," where as many as 50,000 civilians remain trapped between Sri Lankan forces and rebel Tamil Tigers.

According to the article:

"Artillery strikes on a field hospital killed 64 people and wounded 87 on Friday and Saturday, according to a report on a pro-rebel Web site that accused the government of the shelling. The government immediately dismissed the report, and said several loud blasts heard by soldiers in the area could have been rebels mishandling explosives."

So, to recap.  The Sri Lankan military is still lobbing shells into the (easy irony alert) "no-fire zone", where tens of thousands of civilians huddle together in an area scarcely larger than Central Park.  Which suits the Tigers just fine, given their charmingly retro habit of using civilians as human shields.

Sri Lanka: A Land Like No Other.  Replacing their earlier, arguably less successful tourist slogan - "Sri Lanka: Where war crimes are really more like misdemeanors".

(But really, thermobaric weapons?  That seems a bit much.)

[Photo from www.tamilnet.com claiming to show the hospital damaged in the attack. I say "claiming" only because Tamilnet is not the most unbiased of sources.]

Michael Bear
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