[Inner City Press]

For two weeks, Inner City Press has asked at the UN whether international aid funds will be used for detention camps in which those fleeing the conflict zone in Sri Lanka will be detained, until the end of 2009 or longer. Holmes on Monday confirmed that the UN has “offered to assist transit camps” or “semi-permanent camps,” and as to funding as so far “make no links between the two.” He said that in the long run, the UN would be hard pressed to fund camps that violated international standards. But he said the UN wouldn’t want to “punish those in the camps.” So would the UN just keep on paying, for detention camps?

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[AP]

The assailants broke in after the fighting between ethnic rebels and the military erupted again into full-scale war, storming through his family’s home and calling his name. Thanabalasingham Surendran, a member of Sri Lanka’s Tamil ethnic minority, fled to the capital, Colombo. But unknown “messengers from military intelligence” kept calling and demanding extortion money. So the shop owner paid a smuggler to get him out of Sri Lanka. As the government claims it is coming close to winning a quarter-century war with the Tamil Tiger separatists, many ordinary Tamils are giving up on their country.

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[ AP ]

Patients are fleeing a hospital that was hit four times by artillery shells in the war between the Tamil Tiger rebels and government forces in northern Sri Lanka this week, the Red Cross said Tuesday. Also Tuesday, the military said it had captured the rebels’ seventh and final airstrip, effectively grounding their tiny air force as troops pushed ahead with their offensive to crush the guerrilla group and end Asia’s longest-running civil war. On Monday, independent observers handed The Associated Press dramatic pictures and video, showing scores of civilians killed or maimed.

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