PATIENTS WERE yesterday braving repeated shellfire while trying to escape from a hospital struck four times by artillery shells, amid fierce fighting between Tamil Tiger rebels and government troops in northern Sri Lanka, aid agencies said.
A dozen patients have been killed in the past two days in repeated attacks on the hospital in Puthukkudiyiruppu. Both sides deny the shelling. The Red Cross said people were running from the wards – the only medical facilities in the war zone – for “less exposed locations”.
“People have started to leave the hospital because they don’t feel safe there,” Sarasi Wijeratne, a spokeswoman for the International Committee of the Red Cross in Colombo, told the Associated Press.
“Those who are able to move are going away in search of safer places or to find shelter in less exposed locations,” she said.
The Red Cross was in talks with both sides, said Ms Wijeratne, in an attempt to secure safe passage for the sick and evacuate the wounded.
The hospital is in territory held by the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam – territory that is home to tens of thousands of civilians.
The government has ordered civilians to leave the area, the scene of intense fighting over the past two weeks – saying that the war was at a “decisive stage”.
There has been no independent reporting from the frontline. Journalists are barred from the area.
There is little doubt that the Tigers have suffered big military reverses since the Sri Lankan government pulled out of a Norwegian-brokered truce a year ago. – (Guardian service)