United Nations Radio

The UN Emergency Relief Coordinator has reiterated a call for the protection of civilians in the conflict-torn area or northeastern Sri Lanka.

medical aid workers carry injured Tamil man

Briefing reporters Wednesday, John Holmes expressed concern about an estimated 100,000 civilians trapped in this so-called "no fire zone".

Mr. Holmes welcomed the two day pause in military operations against the Tamil Tigers (LTTE) announced by the government at the beginning of the week.

However, he said although it was valuable to provide a respite for the civilian population from the fighting, it was not long enough to allow humanitarian workers to get in significant amount of aid and visit the area to assess the needs of the population.

John Holmes said the pause was also not enough to allow more civilians to leave as the LTTE seemed to have prevented them from doing so.

We believe they should be allowing people, encouraging people to leave the no fire zone. Civilians should not be used as pawns or human shields in this way. So we call on the LTTE very strongly to change their attitude to this and to allow those who wish to leave, which we believe is the vast majority at least, to do so as soon as possible to get them out of harm's way.

John Holmes fighting has now resumed and called on the government to live up to its promises not to use heavy weapons in this area which he said, is one of the factors causing civilian casualties.

Mr. Holmes said that during the pause, the International Red Cross was able to get a ship in there to bring in supplies and evacuate casualties.

He said a ship chartered by the World Food Programme (WFP) is expected to deliver food to the area later this week.

This is Donn Bobb reporting for United Nations Radio.
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