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Change Your Life! |
First independent account of embattled Jaffna |
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May 27, 2000 NEW DELHI, MAY 26 (AP) - Clutching straw mats, plastic buckets and kerosene stoves, some 150,000 people have fled Sri Lanka's war-torn Jaffna peninsula since the fighting escalated in March, aid workers say, providing the first independent eyewitness accounts of life in the embattled north.
During the past two months, air force jets have bombed the Tamil Tiger guerrillas, who have captured key towns, roads and bridges to reach the outskirts of Jaffna city, their former capital, where 40,000 soldiers are holding out.
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Civilians brave exploding mortar shells and bombs to trek to homes of relatives and friends in villages southeast of Jaffna or to makeshift government relief camps, said officials of international aid agencies who returned from Jaffna in the last few days.
The aid workers - most of whom asked not to be identified by name or organization - had spent several days or weeks in the region that the Tigers want to carve into Eelam, a homeland where they say the minority Tamils will not be discriminated against by the nation's majority Sinhalese.
Journalists are barred by both sides from going to Jaffna and the government has cut telephone links. In addition, all news reports filed by organizations operating in Sri Lanka must be submitted to a government censor, who routinely deletes rebel comments and information he feels will demoralize the military or the public.
The constant movement of people makes it difficult to estimate how many have fled, relief workers said in telephone interviews.
People also have moved into temples, mosques and churches, sharing meager food supplies and sleeping on cement floors. The local administration has all but collapsed.
Facilities at the shrines and relief camps are primitive: toilets are few, water and power supplies inadequate or erratic, and medical care insufficient, said Manana Anjaparidze, an internist from the country of Georgia with the relief organization Doctors Without Borders, who worked in two hospitals in Jaffna.
Only two hospitals are operating in the region and getting there is difficult because of the fighting and poor transportation.
Those who do reach the hospitals find them operating with a skeletal staff, fast depleting supplies of antibiotics, anesthetics and bandages, and a handful of patients too sick to move out, Dr. Anjaparidze said.
Last week most of the staff fled the 1,100-bed Jaffna Teaching Hospital, leaving behind 35 patients recovering from fractured limbs and surgeries.
The hospital, which is the only major medical center in the peninsula, has now begun attending to non-emergency cases too. As of Thursday, there were 160 patients, said Gabriel Trujillo, head of mission of Doctors Without Borders in Colombo, the Sri Lankan capital.
Some patients were transferred to a hospital at nearby Point Pedro, the northernmost point on the teardrop shaped island. The Point Pedro hospital's lone doctor is assisted by three volunteers from Doctors Without Borders, who together treat the 95 people hospitalized there, including 23 civilians admitted last week with war wounds.
The Red Cross and UNICEF operate mobile medical clinics but they serve only a few people. Many others are left with no medical care, officials said.
Although both the military and the Tigers try not to target civilians, a handful of them - statistics are hard to come by - have been killed during the fighting, said one relief official who asked not to be identified in any manner.
Despite the hardship, thousands of people continue to live in their homes in Jaffna's towns and villages. Some of them fear their belongings will be stolen or that soldiers or Tigers will move into their houses if they leave.
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