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Lankan army ’kills 129 civilians’ in safe area

Claims pro-Tigers website, military authorities deny allegation

AFP, Colombo
Heavy shelling by the Sri Lankan army of a designated safe area has left 129 civilians dead and 282 wounded, the pro-Tamil Tiger w cbsiteTamilnet.com said yesterday.
The w ebsite said government forces pounded the area on the northeast coast throughout Wednesday, hitting sites including a child nutntion centre. It said the attack was the single most cruel carnage" by the army in monthsof fighting.
Sri Lanka's military, which says it is on the brink of total victory', denied the allegation.
These are fabrications by the LTTE (Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam) to get international attention and mount pressure to have a ceasefire that will help the Tiger leadership to escape the army, military spokesman Udaya Nanayakkara said. The defence ministry said at least lOTiger rebels were killed in overnight fighting in Mullaittivu district, and in turn accused the rebels of positioning their heavy weapons near civilian shelters.
The army also issued a statement denying an earlier Tamilnet report that "chemical weapons" were being used against ethnic rebels defend-ing the village of Puthukkudiriruppu over the weekend.
"Pro-Tiger mouthpieces worldwide, unable to digest the humiliating defeat in the hands of ^ejurijy. forces Juve^_ been...-trying to tarnish the Sri Lanka army image," the army said.
"The Sri Lanka army categorically denies LTTE's baseless allegations and strongly affirms that the army, as a professional military unit, has no need whatsoever to use such weapons when they were so close to the last leg of the war," the statement said.
The Sri Lankan government severely restricts access to the war-torn north, making independent verification of the rival claims impossible.
The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), however, said one of its Sri Lankan employees was killed by a shell Wednesday inside the safe zone.
Authorities have in the past denied hitting civiliahs, and in turn accuse the Tigers of using tens of thousands of Tamils as human shields.
It said explosions were heard inside the safe-zone Wednesday, and attributed them to fighting between the Tigers and Tamil civilians.
The United Nations says both sides in the long-running ethnic conflict may be guilty of war crimes.
The United States Wednesday urged Sri Lanka's government to reach a political settlement with the Tamil minority and urged Tamil rebels to free civilians trapped in the bloody conflict
Richard Boucher, (h? assist tant secretary of state for South Asia, and Robert Blake, the US ambassador to Sri Lanka "emphasised the urgent need for the government of Sri Lanka to engage Tamils, including diaspora communities around the world, to find a political end of the conflict", a State Department statement said.
Around 20 Sri Lankan Tamils held a hunger strike Wednesday outside Norway's government offices, urging Oslo to act in its role as facilitator in the Sri Lankan conflict.
Norway mediated a nowdefunct ceasefire between the Sri Lankan government and the LTTE in February 2002. At the height of their power in the mid-1990s, the Tigers controlled more than a third of Sri Lanka.