Aerial bombing kills more than 1200 in a night

Rescue workers within the Mullaiththeevu Safety Zone have counted more than 1200 bodies after the large scale slaughter over the night of Saturday 9 May and Sunday 10 May morning by the Sri Lanka Army (SLA) with the use of cluster ammunition, multi-barrel rocket launchers and cannons.

The workers fear that there may be additional bodies yet to be uncovered, and the numbers killed will likely rise.

The United States said last Monday it was deeply concerned about an "unacceptably high" level of civilian casualties in Sri Lanka and called on both the government and the Tamil Tigers to prevent civilian deaths.

Meanwhile, the United Nations condemned the civilian "bloodbath" in Sri Lanka.

"We're deeply concerned. We think that there's an unacceptably high level of civilian casualties," US State Department spokesman Ian Kelly told a news briefing, reacting to reports that hundreds of civilians had died on Sunday and Monday in an assault by the Sri Lankan government on the war zone.

"We've repeatedly urged the Tamil Tigers to lay down its arms and allow the civilians to leave," Kelly said.

"The government of Sri Lanka should abide by its April 27th statement that combat operations have concluded and security forces should end the use of heavy weapons which of course could cause civilian casualties."

"The large scale killing of civilians, including the death of over 100 children, over the weekend shows that the bloodbath scenario has become a reality," Gordon Weiss, the UN spokesman in Colombo, told AFP.

The Sri Lankan government blamed the Liberation Tigers, saying that they were bombing the civilian population in the war zone.

It said doctor, V. Shanmugarajah, who has been sending out most of the reports of the dead and injured, has been either indoctrinated or intimidated by the Tigers.

However, UN officials said that the doctor’s testimony had been reliable in the past and that their information also indicated that there had been a massive artillery raid on Saturday and Sunday on the “no-fire zone” where the civilians are sheltering, reported the Times newspaper.

Channel 4 Asia correspondent Nick Patten-Walsh, who was deported from Sri Lanka, said that the government’s claim of the Tamils Tigers killing their own was ‘hard to believe’. “

Stating that two weeks ago the Sri Lanka Army had claimed the Tamil Tigers had 2 artillery pieces left, before claiming there was no use of heavy weapons in the area, “today they claim the Tamil Tigers are shelling themselves,” he said.

Indiscriminate barrage of shelling by the Sri Lanka Army (SLA) on the 'safety zone' is believed to have slaughtered more than 2,000 civilians including large number of women and children.

Every kind of lethal weapon such as the internationally banned cluster shells and shells fired from Multi Barrel Rocket Launchers and Cannons were used turning the so-called safety zone into a killing field.

Rescue workers said several hundreds were very seriously injured, and the critical shortage of medicine at the makeshift hospital in Mullivaaykkaal will lead to many more deaths.

Meanwhile, Mullivaaykkaal Hospital staff said, until 3:00 p.m. the number of bodies brought to the hospital was 378, injured totalled 1122. The staffers added that 106 of the dead, and 251 of the injured were children.

The entire family of a devoted nursing officer, Gracian Tharmarasa, has been wiped out in the shelling.

Dead bodies were found in bunkers and inside the tarpaulin tents.

The casualties and the seriously injured include many elderly, women and children.

The bombing which subsided until noon Sunday increased after 12:00 noon when Sri Lanka Air Force (SLAF) fighter jets carried out two bombing raids at 12:45 p.m. Sunday, reports from inside the safety zone said.

Rescue workers said the counting of the dead is continuing and the actual number killed in the worst-ever man inflicted carnage by Sri Lanka state will not be known for a few days.

The makeshift hospital which is now running in junior school in Mullivaaykkaal is struggling beyond words to cope with the situation, medical sources said.

"This is the first time in history where the International Community and the UN have politically experimented such a mass killing of civilians in a single day by giving an almost open consent to a government," described a human rights professional in Colombo upon hearing the news.

The large scale slaughter is believed to be a result of India prodding Colombo to finish the war before the change of government, political circles in Colombo told TamilNet.

Sri Lankan leaders have refused all international calls for a ceasefire, despite reports from the UN last month saying up to 6,500 civilians may have been killed and 14,000 wounded in fighting since January.

Human rights and conflict prevention groups on Monday urged Japan, which is Sri Lanka's largest aid donor, to "shoulder its responsibilities" and confront the worsening humanitarian crisis in the country.

The appeal was made in a joint letter to Japanese Prime Minister Taro Aso from the heads of Human Rights Watch, the International Crisis Group, Amnesty International and the Global Centre for the Responsibility to Protect.

“We believe that Japan, a powerful player on the humanitarian stage and the largest international donor to Sri Lanka, has an important role to play in saving countless civilian lives,” the agencies said.

“It is time for Japan to show that it is prepared to shoulder its responsibilities.”

"If the world continues to look away from the suffering of civilians in Sri Lanka, as it has largely done until now, it will be a failure of historic proportions," the letter said.