Sri Lanka to stop airstrikes against Tamils

COLOMBO – Under intense international pressure to prevent further civilian deaths, the Sri Lankan government said yesterday it would immediately stop airstrikes and artillery attacks in its war against the Tamil Tiger rebels.

The effect of the decision was not immediately clear. The military says it stopped using such weapons weeks ago, while a rebel official said government airstrikes continued even after the decision was announced. Reporters are barred from the war zone.
The statement came a day after Sri Lanka flatly rejected the rebels’ call for a cease-fire as a desperate ploy by the beleaguered insurgents to avoid certain destruction. The rebels and tens of thousands of ethnic Tamil civilians remain cornered in a small strip of land along the northeast coast.
The UN says nearly 6 500 civilians have been killed over the past three months, and top international diplomats have pressed for a humanitarian truce to allow the remaining noncombatants trapped in the area to flee.
The government said in a statement yesterday ‘that combat operations have reached their conclusion,’ and it instructed the military ‘to end the use of heavy caliber guns, combat aircraft and aerial weapons which could cause civilian casualties.’
The government, which accuses the rebels of holding the civilians as human shields, said it would continue its efforts to free them, the statement said.
Military spokesman Brigadier. Udaya Nanayakkara said the military had ceased using the weapons weeks ago to avoid endangering civilians.
‘We didn’t use air (strikes), we didn’t use (heavy) guns, we didn’t use tanks. We used only small arms,’ he said.
But rebel spokesman Seevaratnam Puleedevan told the TamilNet Web site that the military had launched two airstrikes in the small, coastal village of Mullivaikal even after the announcement and accused the government of ‘deceiving the international community.’
Meanwhile, the top UN humanitarian official, John Holmes, met Sri Lanka’s foreign minister Monday to express concern for the estimated 50 000 trapped civilians.
– Nampa-AP