Red Cross boat team plucks 240 to safety in Sri Lanka

Published on Tuesday 10 February 2009 21:08

RED Cross officials undertook a dangerous rescue mission yesterday, using a boat to evacuate 240 sick and wounded people from war zone in the north-east of Sri Lanka.

The United Nations said it was outraged by the "unnecessary" deaths of hundreds of people inside rebel territory and urged both sides to avoid fighting in civilian areas.

The Sri Lankan government accuses the Tamil Tiger rebels of holding civilians in the war zone hostage. The rebels deny the accusation.

Human rights groups say more than 200,000 civilians are believed to betrapped in the patch of territory still under rebel control.

Brigadier Udaya Nanayakkara, a military spokesman, said the insurgents yesterday fired on a group of more than 1,000 trying to escape the war zone in Udayarkattu, inside what remains of rebel-held territory.

The attack killed 19 people and wounded another 75.

Fishermen helped Red Cross workers to ferry about 240 patients to a specially chartered boat anchored offshore from the village of Putumattalan in the war zone, said Sarasi Wijesinghe, a spokeswoman for the International Committee of the Red Cross.

The patients' injuries were making the operation difficult, she said. "Most of them can't sit upright. They have to be lying down. A lot of care has to be exercised."

The patients had fled the last functioning hospital in the war zone in Puthukkudiyiruppu last week. The Red Cross and government doctors set up a makeshift medical facility in an abandoned community centre and a school, Ms Wijesinghe said. However, the area was shelled on Monday.