By IPS Correspondents
COLOMBO, Sep 28 2008 (IPS)

Tens of thousands of civilians, trapped by fighting between Tamil rebels and the Sri Lankan armed forces in the Vanni, may soon receive their first supplies of essentials since Sep. 16 when United Nations and other humanitarian agencies quit the embattled area.

A displaced family prepares a meal in a corrugated iron shelter in the Vanni. Credit: IPS Correspondents

"We have had several rounds of talks with the World Food Programme (WFP) and other U.N. officials; the plan is to send the convoy later this week," he said.

U.N. officials said the convoy would fly the U.N. flag and international staff from the U.N. would accompany the convoy into the Vanni.

"These supplies are a vital lifeline to tens of thousands of civilians forced by fighting from their homes. Their condition will deteriorate the longer the fighting and their displacement continue," the U.N. Resident Representative in Sri Lanka, Neil Buhne, said at a press conference last week.

The convoy would be the first after all the U.N. and international relief agencies working in the Vanni relocated out of the area following a government directive and fast deteriorating security conditions.

"The route to send these goods has changed. We will be sending the goods through the Mankulam-Oddisuddan-Puthukkudiyiruppu-Mullaithivu and then to Kilinochchi via Paranthan-Mullaithivu road," he said.

Heavy fighting has been reported in areas south of Kilinochchi and the Sri Lankan army said, last week, that its forward units were within striking distance of the town held by the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE).

Since 1982, the LTTE been fighting to carve out an independent state in the north and east for Sri Lanka’s minority Tamils, claiming discrimination by the Sinhalese majority. Some 75,000 people are estimated to have already died in the conflict.

"The army will fire its first rounds towards Kilinochchi town by next week, as troops are some four km away from Kilinochchi… we can even see some of the buildings in the town," army commander Lt. Gen. Fonseka said last week.

The Sri Lankan air force has also intensified aerial raids over Kilinochchi and said its jets carried out a raid on suspected Tiger female suicide cadre training facility, just 1.5 km east of the main road at Kilinochchi on Saturday morning. Air Force commander Roshan Goonetilake said efforts were focused on getting LTTE leader Velupillai Prabhakaran.

"We are getting intelligence and information about the whereabouts of Prabhakaran; we will continue with our raids, targeting those hideouts," he said in a statement.

The latest humanitarian reports and government officials in Kilinochchi said that most of the civilians have begun to leave the besieged town and head northeast. "People have begun moving northeast of Kilinochchi, they now remain on the main road north east of Kilinochchi," he said.

Vedanayagam said that despite the absence of the supply convoys since Sep. 16, food stocks were available in the Vanni. "If there is a delay then we will have problems, but so far, the situation is manageable."

According to latest reports filed by the U.N. and other agencies, there are between 200, 000 to 230,000 internally displaced persons (IDPs) in the Vanni at the moment.

The government has made announcements and air-dropped leaflets asking civilians to leave the Vanni and move to government-secured areas in the south. But, so far, very few have made it to south and none by the land route, leading to accusations that the LTTE was preventing the civilians from leaving.

"The civilian population in the Vanni is effectively trapped. Over the last year at least, the LTTE has placed severe restrictions on civilian movement. Civilians wishing to leave the Vanni had to leave a guarantor who would have to take the responsibility of ensuring the return of that individual. With the on-going military operations civilians have not been allowed to move out of the Vanni and only a small number have been able to escape, mainly by sea," the Colombo-based civic group Centre for Policy Alternatives said in a report released last week.

U.N. and other international agencies that left the Vanni said that its local staff resident in the Vanni had been prevented from leaving by the LTTE.

"In the Vanni, over 500 national staff working for NGOs stayed behind as they were not provided travel passes by the LTTE. The U.N. still has 21 national staff within the Vanni who did not receive passes or are staying because of their families," the Inter Agency Standing Committee, an umbrella body of U.N. and other agencies, said last week.

International pressure, meanwhile, has risen on the LTTE to allow freedom of movement for the civilians, especially after several key international players held discussions with Sri Lankan government representatives on the sidelines of last week’s U.N. General Assembly sessions.

"We urge the LTTE to take urgent action to allow free movement of civilians," said a statement issued Friday by British ministers Lord Malloch Brown and Shahid Malik.

That statement has drawn reactions from the British Tamil Forum (BTF) which circulated a response saying that it was the Sri Lanka government that was ‘’restricting free movement of civilians within and out of Jaffna Peninsula, where the Sinhala army is an occupying force’’.

The BTF statement spoke of ‘’degrading restrictions laid on the Tamil community living in and around Colombo, restrictions placed on journalists to travel around Sri Lanka to report on current security situation and human rights violations and the inhuman treatment of IDPs by restricting their mobility by placing them in 'detention centres' (e.g. in Mannar) in contravention of humanitarian practices, human rights laws, U.N. Charters and Geneva Conventions.’’

"Both sides need to make sure that they’re not catching civilians in the crossfire, that they’re letting people go to places where they can be safe, and that humanitarian deliveries can take place for these populations that are affected by the fighting," US assistant secretary of state for South and Central Asian Affairs Richard Boucher said in New York, last week, after a meeting of the Tokyo Donor Co-chairs, a collective of international donors made up of the U.S., the European Union, Japan and Norway.

"Their (civilians’) safety and freedom of movement must be paramount. It is crucial that full access for relief supplies is ensured and that the safe transit of these supplies be supervised by independent humanitarian monitors," European Union commissioner for external relations Benita Ferrero-Waldner, who was also part of the meeting, was quoted as saying.

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