Civilian death toll reaching "appalling levels"

The first six weeks of this year have been some of the deadliest for civilians since the fighting between Sri Lankan government forces and the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) intensified in December 2005.

More than 180 civilians were killed and almost 270 injured in attacks on buses, at the country’s busiest railway station in the capital Colombo and elsewhere during the first 42 days of 2008, the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) said in a 13 February statement.

"The number of civilians affected by the violence throughout the country, either by being directly targeted or as bystanders, has reached appalling levels," Toon Vandenhove, ICRC head of delegation in Sri Lanka, said. "Sadly, many of the victims have been children on their way to or from school."

The worst attacks have been those targeting civilian buses, with at least 70 killed since 16 January, when the Sri Lankan government pulled out of the ceasefire agreement (CFA) of 2002. Three attacks took place in southern and central areas under government control while one occurred in Tamil Tiger-controlled areas in Mannar District in the northwest.

Truce collapse

Observers, including the Colombo-based think-tank, Centre for Policy Alternatives (CPA), report that the rise in civilian casualties is directly linked to the collapse of the five-year truce.

Not enough is being done to ensure that civilian suffering and misery is minimised by both sides.

“Attacks on helpless civilians have increased following the intensification of hostilities in the new year and after the abrogation of the Ceasefire Agreement and the removal of the presence on the ground of the Sri Lanka Monitoring Mission (SLMM), in particular,” the CPA stated on 13 February.

The first of the recent deadly attacks targeting civilians coincided with the CFA being terminated by the government. Twenty-seven civilians were killed in a Claymore mine attack on a bus in southeastern Buttala town, 250km southeast of Colombo.

Attacks in urban areas have also increased, resulting in higher numbers of civilian casualties, an ICRC official in Colombo told IRIN.

Hundreds of combatants have also been killed: according to the Ministry of Defence, 1,238 Tamil Tigers and 105 government forces died in the first six weeks of this year.

Calls to minimise civilian suffering

With the rise in civilian deaths, humanitarian agencies have increasingly called for all parties to the conflict to respect international humanitarian law.

“CPA wishes to stress that it is incumbent on all combatants to respect the principles and standards of international humanitarian and human rights laws and norms,” the CPA stated. It called on both the government and the Tigers to pledge that non-combatants would be spared in the fighting.

“Not enough is being done to ensure that civilian suffering and misery is minimised by both sides,” Paikiasothy Saravanamuttu, the executive director of CPA, told IRIN. “There are international standards pertaining to this and the two sides need to publicly commit to them and to demonstrate that commitment in deed.”

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