Sri Lanka: situation worsens in no-fire zone
For a while it’s been almost impossible to imagine how savage life must be inside the no-fire zone. But now it’s got even worse.
The shelling of the 3km square patch of coastal land has been going on at an accelerated pace, most accounts suggest, since the weekend.
It’s impossible to know how many have died, but most estimates suggest hundreds, others even thousands.
If you look at a satellite image of the area, you can see dozens of craters – the pock marks that one analyst said were consistent with “widespread shelling”. These are areas where, two weeks ago, there were dozens of tents instead.
The mystery of where all the people have gone deepens. Satellite pictures from a week ago show 11,300 tents, one analysis suggests. Aid workers think about eight people lived in each tent – that’s a guess, but one based on the density of people there about a month ago.
After the weekend, a fresher image shows the tents have completely moved. There are now fewer of them, it seems, cramped into tiny pockets on the southern flank of the area.
One aid worker told me they think each tent might account for 16 people. Where the tents used to be, to the north, there are dozens of craters. It’s impossible to know if they were made before the tents moved, or after.
The situation has become so impossible, the Red Cross can now no longer make it in there.
They were taking out the injured, and bringing in what food they could. This was no easy task – the ship having to dock one kilometre off the shore and send small fibreglass boats to ferry back and forth to the shore. Often under fire.
But now that has stopped. The boat cannot function there. The Red Cross today called the situation an “unimaginable catastrophe“. The makeshift hospital there is being hit so often, it has stopped functioning.
And right now, the Sri Lankan army is pushing forwards. They say they are 1.5km away from dominating the entire coastal strip. They say thousands of civilians are fleeing, and continue to do so. They’ve released more aerial drone footage of this exodus.
You can see people are getting out now, but what’s not been clear for a long time, is where are they going?
For about two weeks, there have been very few people arriving at the huge network of internment camps meant to receive these people in the town of Vavuniya, aid workers say.
Only about 3,000, it’s thought, since the weekend. Many are asking, given that the army says it’s ploughing ahead into the heavily populated no-fire zone, where the escapees are going?
There are fears they are being held somewhere between the coastal strip and this set of internment camps. One aid worker told me 3,000 people are thought to be held in the northern town of Kilinochi – it’s not clear how or where.
So the scene is impossibly bleak: the army is set upon moving forwards, “rescuing” civilians that the White House says it is shelling. The Tamil Tigers have nowhere to run to, and thousands of human shields still at their sides. The UN says the next 24 to 48 hours will be critical. They will probably bring the end of this stand-off, but more worryingly the loss of many more lives.