Sri Lanka government admits bombing civilian safe haven

[oberliner]

Source: London Times

Sri Lanka has admitted its air force bombed a safe haven established for up to 150,000 civilians fleeing fighting between the army and the Tamil Tigers.

But Palitha Kohona, the Foreign Secretary, said that it was targeting rebel artillery positions and that there were no civilians in the targeted area at the time.

He was responding to a report in The Times yesterday that confidential satellite images in a leaked United Nations report appeared to show evidence of aerial bombing on the safe haven, or “no-fire zone”.

“As long as the retaliation is proportionate, it is perfectly legitimate and what we did exactly was locate these guns and retaliate against those guns,” Mr Kohona told al Jazeera television.

Read more: http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/asia/article6206708.ece

[David__77]

1. I hope the conflict ends soon.

I do not have a position on the Sinhala-Tamil question, but I do hope that there is minimal loss of life, especially for non-combatants. It does appear that the LTTE insurgency is coming to an end for the most part though. The Sri Lankan state will likely consolidate control over all but a few remote rural areas. Given this, an orderly retreat by the LTTE would be in the interests of the people.