Posted on 12/29/2004 8:18:54 PM PST by Racehorse
[World News]: Colombo, Dec 28 : About 8,000 people have died and half a million displaced in Sri Lanka's northeast following the deadly tsunami, Tamil Tiger guerrillas said Tuesday.
A website run by the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) said the Tamil Rehabilitation Organisation (TRO), a rebel front, was engaged on a "war footing" rendering humanitarian assistance in the coastal areas.
Media reports quoted a leader of LTTE's Sea Tigers as saying that two Sea Tigers bases at Mullaitivu, in the country's rebel-held northeast, had been wiped out and an unspecified number of LTTE cadres had perished.
Sri Lanka's coastal areas, including in the northeast, bore the brunt of Sunday's tsunami that has killed some 11,000 people in the island, forcing it to seek international assistance.
Official figures released in Colombo Monday put the toll in the whole of the island at nearly 11,000, including over 800 in LTTE-controlled areas in the northeast.
But TamilNet website had a different story.
"Beaches are strewn with debris and waste. Whole villages have been turned into cemeteries. Over 8,000 have lost their lives in the northeast. More than 500,000 have been displaced from their homes and left without shelter," it said.
[. . .]
It said TRO was engaged in the task of providing food, medical help, transport, temporary shelters and other urgent humanitarian assistance for the affected people.
"The magnitude of the humanitarian crisis we are faced with is such that we need the urgent support of the international community and the generous and immediate support of our Tamil brothers and sisters living in many lands.
"The present resources available to TRO are nowhere near sufficient to meet the huge crisis that has arisen and we are faced with the prospect of an ever increasing toll of the dead," it added.
It called for assistance from the Tamil diaspora to deal with the situation and route it directly through TRO, saying help channelled through the Sri Lankan government had failed to reach the displaced in the northeast.
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