Tracking: Crisis in Sri Lanka
Currently the worst place in the world is a small strip of land in northern Sri Lanka, where tens of thousands of civilians remain trapped on the front lines between the Sri Lankan army and the rebel Tamil Tigers.
Since the last post on Sri Lanka yesterday, the situation has continued to deteriorate:
- According to the UN, between 90,000 - 100,000 people had fled the small strip of Tiger-controlled territory since Monday. (For its part, the Sri Lankan military reports that 103,000 have crossed the front lines in the past few days.)
- The UN also estimates that around 50,000 people remain trapped in the five square miles of land still controlled by the Tamil Tigers. They are caught in the middle of a battlefield - suffering horrific injuries from Sri Lankan artillery, while used as human shields by the Tigers.
- A report on Fox News described the desperate situation for those trapped in the midst of the fighting: "International aid groups have been refused permission to enter the so-called 'safe zone' for weeks. No medical supplies or anesthesia have been allowed in, and casualties are increasing due to continued shelling from both sides."
More information - including first-hand accounts - below:
- A doctor with Medecins Sans Frontieres, working at a hospital in Sri Lankan-controlled territory, described the carnage:
"Our hospital has got about 450 beds, and we’ve now got more than 1,700 patients in the hospital—on the floor, in the corridors, and even outside. So the hospital is very close to being overwhelmed.
About three-quarters of the injured coming in now have suffered from blast injuries, and the rest are gunshot wounds and mine explosions. We are seeing who has survived on the field and actually reached us. We see abdominal injuries, but many of the chest or head injuries we’re suspecting don’t survive the blasts to get to us...
We’re seeing a lot of men with severe injuries, but we’re also seeing a lot of women, a lot of children. We’re doing amputations on children; we’re doing abdominal expirations for internal damage as well, in children. And sometimes we’re operating on both the mother and father and a child from the same family that had been wounded in the same explosion or mine. We’re seeing whole families that are wounded sometimes."
[Thanks to UN Dispatch for pointing out the interview.]
- UNICEF has warned of a "humanitarian avalanche" as more and more people flee the fighting. (For a video of those fleeing, see here. This video contains graphic images.) The Sri Lankan government has failed to set up adequate facilities to deal with the deluge; overcrowding and inadequate services are the main concerns.
"The result, according to the UN, is that more than 100,000 desperate people — many of them injured and traumatised — are now heading for camps that are severely overcrowded and running short of supplies. Even the Government concedes that a humanitarian emergency is unfolding. 'Overcrowding was a problem before the exodus,' Gordon Weiss, the UN spokesman in Colombo, the capital, said. 'The existing sites are going to be overwhelmed in the coming days.'"
- The Sri Lankan Foreign Minister has admitted that the country faces an "emergency humanitarian situation". That said, other Sri Lankan officials are downplaying the scale of the crisis.
- For more background information, see these two informative pieces - one by Reuters, and one by Al Jazeera. For more on the humanitarian response, see this statement from the UN. For a detailed map of the area involved, see here; for satellite imagery, see here.
- Finally, an interesting piece from Wronging Rights about how the Responsibility to Protect applies to the situation.
[AFP photo of civilians fleeing the fighting]
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