Nine patients are killed as hospital is caught in cross fire in Sri Lankan war zone

At least nine people were killed and many more wounded when a hospital in Sri Lanka’s northern war zone was hit by artillery fire, international aid agencies have reported.

The International Committee of the Red Cross and the United Nations have said that on Sunday 1 February several artillery barrages hit Puthukkudiyirippu Hospital, which is caught in the middle of a fierce battle between the Sri Lankan army and the separatist Tamil Tiger rebels.

The aid agencies said that it was not immediately clear which side had fired on the hospital or whether the attack was deliberate. “After the initial rounds came into the hospital, we and the Red Cross contacted both sides and made it clear that the hospital was under attack,” Gordon Weiss, a UN spokesman, told the BBC. “Nevertheless those attacks continued.”

A local health official claimed that the shells had been fired by the Sri Lankan army, the Associated Press news agency reported. But the Sri Lankan government, which has repeatedly denied claims that its offensive against the Tamil Tigers has caused widespread casualties among civilians, blamed the attack on the rebels. With journalists barred from entering the war zone, it is impossible to obtain any independent verification.

“We’re shocked that the hospital was hit,” said Paul Castella, a Red Cross official in Colombo, “and this for the second time in recent weeks. Wounded and sick people, medical personnel, and medical facilities are all protected by international humanitarian law. Under no circumstance may they be directly attacked.”

Morven Murchison-Lochrie, a Red Cross medical coordinator who is working at Puthukkudiyirippu Hospital, said that the staff remained committed to caring for the more than 500 in-patients, many of whom are seriously wounded.

“The staff are under acute stress, surrounded as they are by the sound of the ongoing fighting and the influx of new patients,” she said. “Ambulances are constantly arriving, but people are also being brought in by wagon, pick-up truck, tractor, and even motor scooter.”

The Red Cross, which is the only international aid organisation still active in the war zone, warned last week that a “major humanitarian crisis” was unfolding, with around a quarter of a million civilians trapped in the far north of the country between the advancing Sri Lankan army and the retreating Tamil Tiger forces.

The Sri Lankan government, which has sworn to eradicate the Tamil Tigers, has dismissed suggestions of a humanitarian crisis and insists that the number of civilians caught in the fighting is much smaller than the aid agencies claim.