Red Cross evacuates foreigners from Jaffna

The fighting between Tamil Tiger rebels and government forces, the first ground battles since a 2002 ceasefire, has displaced more than 200,000 people and cut off half a million people in Jaffna from essential supplies. Shortages are rising.

A Red Cross-flagged cargo ship that arrived off Jaffna on Thursday night was unloading around 1,500 tonnes of food, the first shipment since fighting blocked road access two weeks ago.

A ferry also bearing the Red Cross flag was due to load the first 150 of an estimated 500 people, mostly aid staff and other foreign nationals, who are to be evacuated from the peninsula to the northeastern port of Trincomalee and then the capital.

Intermittent artillery fire could be heard in Jaffna overnight. The military said rebels had withdrawn from some previously captured army positions but had left an improvised bomb.

"The troops were consolidating the position and checking," said army spokesman Brigadier Prasad Samarsinghe. "A soldier just put his foot on it and it exploded. Six are dead, four wounded."

Army-held Jaffna lies on the northern tip of the island republic, cut off from the rest of the country by rebel territory. During the truce, however, goods were allowed across.

The historical capital of Sri Lankan Tamils, Jaffna has changed hands several times in two decades of civil war and is seen as a key Tiger goal in their fight for a separate Tamil homeland.

The only other routes into Jaffna are by air or sea but the Palaly air base is believed to be within range of rebel artillery and rebel Sea Tigers threaten shipping.

Military aircraft fly in metres above the surface of the sea and only stay on the ground long enough for reinforcements to jump down and for the wounded and the dead to be loaded.

In the capital, Colombo, police Special Task Force troopers raided houses near the international airport on Saturday, seizing fragmentation mines, assault rifles and detonators that they suspected the Tigers planned to use for attacks. Sixteen men and two women were arrested.

But in what appeared to be a rare sign of flexibility, the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) agreed to release a policeman held prisoner since September 2005 after a request from unarmed Nordic ceasefire monitors.