Geneva, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) – “Our staff are witnessing an unimaginable humanitarian catastrophe,” ICRC (International Red Cross) Director of operations, Pierre Kraehenbuehl, said in a statement 14 May from the organization’s headquarters in Geneva. “Despite high-level assurances, the lack of security on the ground means that our sea operations continue to be stalled, and this is unacceptable. No humanitarian organization can help them in the current circumstances. People are left to their own devices.”
Geneva, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) – A local International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) employee and his mother were killed 13 May by an army shell, reports Le Temps, in the crowded and dangerous northeast corner of Sri Lanka, where government troops are battling Tamil Tigers.
A ferry boat contracted by ICRC to take essential food and medicine to the safe area and evacuate those civilians most at risk, especially the wounded, women and children, was unable to beach Monday 12 May due to the dangerous situation, according to Paul Castella, ICRC chief delegate in Colombo. The ICRC has called for a ceasefire to allow civilians trapped by the fighting to leave.
The UN called for an immediate end to the fighting in Sri Lanka, which a UN spokesman described as a “bloodbath scenario [that] has become a reality.” reports AFP. Government forces and Tamil Tigers have both said civilian casualties are very high, with each side blaming the other. The Tigers hold a strip of coastline that was heavily attacked over the weekend. Among the dead: more than 100 children. Al Jazeera, ColomboPage, LankaPage
Almost 400 civilian are said to have been killed by government artillery fire Saturday and early Sunday, according to Tamil Tiger reports that quote medical workers in the NE Sri Lanka conflict zone. The government has denied shelling the designated safe area. Independent confirmation is impossible because Western news agencies are not allowed access.
Geneva, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) -The UNHCR (United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees) in Geneva announced late Friday that it is stepping up emergency aid to Sri Lanka to help “tens of thousands” of people who are newly displaced as a result of fighting in the north of the country. The group is boosting aid for internally displaced persons by $2 million. The first of two Boeing 747 cargo planes that will deliver more than 200 tons of tents arrived in Colombo Monday 27 April, carrying 2,850 family-sized tents from central stockpiles in Dubai.
Some 25,000 civilians are believed to have fled a combat zone in northern Sri Lanka after government forces “broke through a fortification which had been blocking their advance into the Tigers’ last stronghold,” the BBC writes, quoting the army. The UNHCR in Geneva 17 April said it had stepped up its efforts to help civilians in the face of some 63,000 people who had fled areas with fighting.
Geneva, Switzerland and Sri Lanka (GenevaLunch) – Sri Lanka has rebuffed UN efforts for a truce that would allow more civilians to leave the country’s northeast corner, where fighting with Tamil Tigers continues. An estimated 50-100,000 people are trapped in the area, reports the BBC. In Geneva, the UNHCR (United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees) says that 63,000 have fled the area, with refugees describing dire conditions. The UNHCR says it is concerned about the growing need for de-mining in the area when refugees return home.
Chart: UNHCR, "Asylum Levels and Trends in Industrialized Countries, 2008"
Geneva, Switzerland (Genevalunch) – Political turmoil in Afghanistan and Somalia increased the number of asylum seekers in 2008 for the second year running, according to the UNHCR (United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees). Iraq provided the largest number of applicants for asylum, 40,500, a 10 percent decrease from 2007.
Five police escorts have died and six members of the Sri Lankan cricket team were injured, two reportedly with bullet wounds, after the bus taking them to the stadium in Lahore, Pakistan was attacked by what appears to have been a well-organized and well-armed group of a dozen men. AP, BBC, and background on “security beefed up” from CricketNext
Geneva, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) – The UNHCR (United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees) has sharply condemned the suicide attack on a refugee registration centre in Sri Lanka 9 February that reportedly killed 10 people and injured some 40. The lead humanitarian aid organization for the conflict area said 10 February that it is “outraged by the unnecessary loss of hundreds of lives and the continued suffering of innocent civilians” inside the area in Sri Lanka controlled by the Tamil Tigers.
Geneva, Switzerland (romandie/ATS, Fre) – Some 5,000 people, according to ATS estimates, organized by the Tamil Youth Organization in Switzerland, marched in protest in front of the United Nations building in Geneva Wednesday afternoon with placards to “stop genocide” in Sri Lanka.
Bern, Switzerland (Le Temps, Fre) – The Swiss ambassador, along with the German one, in Colombo, Sri Lanka, were reported to have been asked to leave, but the Sri Lankan government Monday reassured Bern that it was all a mistake, a case of a misunderstanding, and that relations remain good, reports Le Temps.
It is unclear who fired them, but several shells have reportedly hit the pediatric unit of a hospital in rebel-held territory in northeastern Sri Lanka, and first reports are that several people, mainly children, have died. BBC
Tamil Tigers appear to have rebounded in their fight against Sri Lankan government forces, saying they killed 53 troops, while the government’s military officers denied they suffered heavy casualties, reports the BBC. The government announced two days ago it had taken Kilinochchi, the rebels’ central base, in the deepest move into Tamil territory in several years.
A suicide bomb attack that the Sri Lankan government is blaming on separatist Tamil Tigers, in Anuradhapura, has killed 25 people and injured at least 65 more; among those killed were Maj Gen Janaka Perera and his wife. Perera was “a controversial commander” in the 1990s reports the BBC, accused by the Tigers and Amnesty International of torturing and killing large numbers of people.
