[AFP]

Tens of thousands of Sri Lankan civilians face “great danger” after being caught in fighting between Tamil rebels and the advancing military, a senior UN diplomat warned on Friday. “Estimates vary of the number of civilians trapped, from 70,000 according to the government, through around 200,000 according to UN estimates, up to 300,000 or more according to Tamil groups,” said UN Under Secretary General for Humanitarian Affairs John Holmes told Security Council members. The civilians were stuck in a no-man’s land spanning around 14 square kilometers (five square miles), as expectations grew that government forces would move in on Tamil positions in short order.

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[BBC]

UNHCR has requested the government to allocate more land for the Internally Displaced thousands who may cross over to government controled areas. “So far over thirty six thousand people have crossed over” Rishad Bathiudeen, Minister of Resettlement & Disaster Relief Services told the BBC. “UNHCR is urging the government to continue to make necessary preparations to receive and accommodate the large numbers expected in the coming weeks or months,” UNHCR spokesman William Spindler told journalists.

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[Doctors Without Borders]

Many are injured, some with infected wounds that are weeks old. As a result, many people have been maimed for life. Even those who have made it to Vavuniya have no freedom of movement, no access to information, and no options to look for lost family members. Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF) is urgently calling on both parties in the conflict in the Vanni area in northern Sri Lanka to ensure the safety of civilians and to allow access to humanitarian assistance. As MSF has been denied access to the population trapped inside the Vanni, the organization is relying on the personal accounts of patients to highlight what is happening there.

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[Reuters]

Fitch Ratings changed the outlook on Sri Lanka to negative from stable on Friday, expressing worries about its external financial position reflected in the sharp fall in its foreign exchange reserves. “Without a sharp contraction in domestic demand to curtail imports, or a significant depreciation of the exchange rate to otherwise correct the trade imbalance, Sri Lanka may not have access to sufficient international funding to cover the current account shortfall and its international debt repayments, resulting in ongoing pressures on official reserves,” the agency said in a statement.

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[Committee to Protect Journalists]

Sri Lanka’s journalists are under intensive assault. Authorities have failed to carry out effective and credible investigations into the killing of journalists who question the government’s conduct of a war against Tamil separatists or criticize the military establishment. Three attacks in January targeting the mainstream media drew the world’s attention to the problem, but top journalists have been killed, attacked, threatened, and harassed since the government began to pursue an all-out military victory over the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) in late 2006. Many local and foreign journalists and members of the diplomatic community believe the government is complicit in the attacks.

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[Reuters]

Up to 85,000 civilians trapped in northeastern Sri Lanka could flee the war zone in coming weeks as the army closes in on rebel-held territory, the United Nations refugee agency said on Friday. The Sri Lankan government has allocated 300 acres of land where the UNHCR can receive up to 42,000 people by the end of next week, spokesman William Spindler said, citing the need to double the space to accommodate uprooted people in the region.

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[Reporters Without Borders]

Reporters Without Borders is extremely shocked by today’s arrest of N. Vithyatharan, the editor of Sudar Oli, a Colombo-based Tamil daily that is part of the Uthayan press group. He was forcibly arrested while attending the funeral in Colombo of a relative of the group’s chairman. The media minister told the organisation that he was being “treated well” by the police.

“Carried out without a warrant, this arrest was a violation of the rule of law,” Reporters Without Borders said. “The police must release Vithyatharan without delay. What is this respected Tamil editor accused of? Outspoken coverage of the situation in Sri Lanka, including the fate of its Tamil population.”

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[Voice of America]

A U.S. Senate committee Tuesday focused its attention on the situation in Sri Lanka, where the military is engaged in an intense battle with Tamil Tigers as the two sides struggle for control of what is believed to be the last of the rebel strongholds. Witnesses at the Senate hearing decried the actions of both sides in one of Asia’s longest running wars. Anna Neistat, senior researcher for Human Rights Watch, told a Senate Foreign Relations committee hearing that human rights violations are being committed by both sides in Sri Lanka’s 25-year-old conflict.

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[UNICEF]

Sennappu had a split second, a moment, literally a heartbeat to throw her body around her 18-month-old daughter before the bomb landed. Her reactions were enough time to save the life of her baby girl. Sennappu was killed instantly. As Sri Lanka’s conflict has grown in intensity, so too has the number of civilians injured and killed. UNICEF has consistently called upon the Government of Sri Lanka and the LTTE (the rebel group known as the Tamil Tigers of Tamil Eelam) to give absolute priority to the protection of civilians. And yet mothers like Sennappu continue to die, as do children.

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[AP]

Devi Segaram kept on the run for two years, forced to move time and again to stay ahead of the civil war sweeping across northern Sri Lanka. Then there was nowhere left to shelter. So, two weeks ago, the teacher and her daughter joined hundreds of other ethnic Tamils to make a dash for safety just before dawn, sprinting across open fields and braving rebel gunfire to reach government lines. They joined more than 30,000 other civilians who have fled the war zone and are now living in camps, penned in by razor wire and watched over by soldiers of the Sinhalese-dominated government.

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