Hundreds Are Killed In Sri Lanka Attack

COLOMBO, Sri Lanka, May 11 -- The killing of hundreds of ethnic Tamil civilians in a weekend artillery barrage in Sri Lanka's northern war zone was the "bloodbath" that the international community had long feared would take place, the United Nations said Monday.

The artillery attack killed at least 378 civilians and wounded more than a thousand more, according to a government health official inside rebel-controlled territory in the north. More than 100 of the victims were children, the United Nations said Sunday.

A rebel-linked Web site blamed the attack on the government. The military accused the beleaguered Tamil Tigers of shelling their own territory to gain international sympathy and force a cease-fire.

The attack marked the bloodiest assault on ethnic Tamil civilians since the civil war flared again more than three years ago. Health officials said a hospital in the war zone was overwhelmed by casualties, and the death toll was expected to rise.

"The U.N. has consistently warned against the bloodbath scenario as we've watched the steady increase in civilian deaths over the last few months," United Nations spokesman Gordon Weiss said Monday. "The large-scale killing of civilians over the weekend, including the deaths of more than 100 children, shows that that bloodbath has become a reality."

Reports of the fighting are difficult to verify because the government bars journalists and aid workers from the war zone, but the United Nations confirmed a heavy toll from the attack.

The first shells slammed into the tiny strip of rebel-controlled area along the northeast coast Saturday evening, soon after a Red Cross ship that had been evacuating wounded civilians left the area, health officials said.

About 50,000 civilians are crowded into the 2.4-mile-long strip of coast along with the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam rebels, who have been fighting for 25 years for a homeland for minority Tamils.

Artillery pounded the area throughout the night, forcing thousands to huddle in makeshift bunkers, said V. Shanmugarajah, a health official in the region.

Hours after the attack, the dead and wounded continued to pour into the hospital, he said. As of Sunday afternoon, the bodies of 378 civilians had been brought in and were being buried by volunteers, but the death toll was probably far higher, because many families buried their slain relatives where they fell, he said.

The rebel-linked TamilNet Web site said rescue workers had counted 1,200 civilians killed in the attack. Among the dead was rebel military spokesman Rasiah Ilanthirayan, according to TamilNet.

Bodies were laid in rows on the mud outside the hospital, some of their faces covered with mats and sheets, according to photos from the area. One small boy was stripped to the waist, his head covered in a bloody bandage and his mouth agape.

The hospital was struggling to cope with more than 1,120 wounded civilians.

The government had recently sent medical supplies, but a shortage of physicians, nurses and aides made treatment difficult, Shanmugarajah said.

More than half the hospital staff did not turn up for work because their homes were attacked, and many of the wounded went untreated for more than 24 hours, said another health official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to talk to the news media.

The shelling had subsided early Sunday, but a new bombardment began about 6 p.m., the official said.

Suresh Premachandran, an ethnic Tamil lawmaker, said the assault was the deadliest attack on civilians since the 1983 anti-Tamil riots that killed as many as 2,000 people and helped trigger the civil war.