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LTTE guns down civilians fleeing Lankan war zone

Thousands of Tamils crossing the frontlines

AFP, Colombo
Sri Lanka's Tamil Tiger guerrillas yesterday shot dead 19 civilians and wounded 75 others fleeing territory still under rebel control, military spokesman Udaya Nanayakkara said.
Survivors of the attack who arrived at a military post told how the Tiger fighters had fired on a group of 1,000 people trying to cross the frontlines to safety, he said.
"The civilians came to an army position carrying the dead and the wounded, who had gunshot injuries." Nanayakkara said, adding 12 men, five women and two children had been lolled.
According to the government, this month 25.000 non-combatants have already escaped from the rebels, who face imminent defeat in their decades-long armed struggle for an inde-pendentTamil homeland.
The attack came a day after a Tamil Tiger suicide bomber killed 30 people at a centre for displaced civilians, in what Sri Lankan authorities said was another attempt to stop people from leaving the rebels’ shrinking territory.
But thousands of Tamils are crossing the frontlines in the north of the island each day, the government has said, as it pushes on with a massive offensive to crush the Tigers after 30
years of unrest.
Sri Lanka accuses the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) -- as they are formally known - - of holding the civilians as "human shields."
Monday's suicide bombing was condemned by the United Nations and the United States, which backed Colombo's stance, saying that the attack was an "apparent effort by the LIT E to discourage Tamils from leaving the conflict area."
The Tamil Tigers have issued no response to the latest violence, and no independent verification was available as journalists, aid groups and international observers are banned from reporting from the area.
"What we are seeing is that more people are coming over to our side," Nanayakkara said. "The Tigers have also been firing mortars at the routes taken by the civilians, but still they want to escape from the fighting."
Nanayakkara said 10 civilians were among the 30 people killed in Monday's attack when a female suicide bomber hit a makeshift shelter where security forces receive displaced people.
Colombo says the number of civilians trapped by the conflict is now less than 100,000, though UN agencies recently placed it as high as 250,000.