Lankan army accused of carnage

A Tamil Tiger spokesman has accused the Sri Lankan government of shelling civilians and wreaking carnage during its military offensive in the north.

The government has denied the allegations, in turn accusing the rebel group of targeting civilians.

The army has said at least 25,000 civilians have fled the Tamil Tiger-held area.

Government camps house thousands of refugees fleeing the fighting/ Photo credit: AP

The rebels have so far rejected government calls to surrender, or face a final assault.

The rebel spokesman, who gave his name as Thileepan, spoke to the BBC by telephone with the sound of explosions in the background.

He said a hospital, an orphanage and many houses had been hit and huge numbers of civilians had been killed in a military onslaught of the area.

He said people had been reduced to hiding under logs and trees and using makeshift bunkers dug into the sand.

'Human avalanche'

The Sri Lankan military has denied shelling civilians inside the rebel-held area.

Army spokesman Brigadier Udaya Nanayakkara told the BBC that only small-arms had been used.

He said the Tigers were targeting civilians because they knew that if non-combatants left, the rebels would be "sitting ducks".

The army says three rebel suicide bombings had targeted fleeing civilians, killing 17.

One Tamil man who had just left the conflict zone said the rebels tried to shoot anyone planning to escape.

Local newspapers are covered with pictures of large numbers of people leaving rebel territory.

One calls the process a "human avalanche".

People escaped after troops broke through a fortification which had been blocking their advance into the Tigers' last stronghold, the army said on Monday.

The pro-rebel TamilNet website said several hundred civilians were feared killed and injured after troops advanced into the zone.

Each side accuses the other of killing civilians in the long running civil conflict.

Foreign reporters are not allowed into the combat zone, making it impossible to independently verify the claims.

Our correspondent says life for the Tamil civilians in the zone is a nightmare.

There has been shelling for months, while the UN says the Tigers are preventing people from escaping, despite rebel denials.

The government is not giving the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) access to the landward side of the zone.

Surrender deadline

Earlier the authorities gave Tamil Tiger rebels a 24-hour deadline to surrender. The military operation to crush the rebels is in the final stages, but there has been international concern over the safety of thousands of civilians trapped in the war zone.

Minister Keheliya Rambukwella, who is defense affairs spokesman, says Tamil Tiger leader Prabhakaran and his group must surrender by noon, Tuesday, or face a "military course of action."

The government warning came after the army said that 25,000 civilians trapped with the rebels in a small strip of territory have fled the area. The military says the exodus started after troops broke through a long earthen wall which was blocking their exit.

Minister Rambukwella said that the army's entry into the last area held by the rebels had made it safer for civilians to cross over. He says footage from an aerial video shows that many people are escaping, while many others are waiting to cross over.

"The influx is huge, I think thousands are moving out of this no-war zone to safe areas . It is happening," he said. "We will have the photographic material as evidence and we can see on the screens now people moving in thousands."

The army says at least 17 civilians, including women and children, were killed when three suicide bombers detonated explosives to deter people from escaping.

There is no independent verification of events in the war zone, from which reporters are barred.

An estimated 100,000 civilians have been caught in a 17-square-kilometer "no-fire" zone into which the rebels are confined after losing all the territory they controlled. The government and the United Nations have accused the rebels of using the civilians as human shields and preventing them from leaving. The rebels say the civilians are not willing to go out because they do not trust the army.

The plight of the civilians has prompted concern and numerous calls by the international community for a truce to allow them to escape.

Minister Rambukwella says the government will not suspend its campaign to defeat the rebels, who are also known as the LTTE.

"We reiterated and we kept on saying that we are not interested in going into any truce or any kind of pauses or any kind of ceasefires with the LTTE. Enough is enough," he said.

"We have had 30 years of experience and we have experienced the calamities that have resulted of these ceasefires. We are now proved right. We were very confident that our forces will do the needful and it is happening now, you can see it with your own eyes."