Sri Lanka – ICRC Bulletin No. 06 / 2006

General situation

Exchanges of shelling in the areas of Kilali, Muhamalai and Nagar Kovil (north of the Vanni and south of the Jaffna peninsula) have continued. Road traffic along the A9 between Jaffna and Vavuniya at Muhamalai remains impossible. Two government vessels carrying essential food supplies arrived at Point Pedro and two passenger vessels brought Jaffna residents stranded in Vavuniya. In addition, the ICRC operated a one-off chartered flight from Colombo to Jaffna and back. Intermittent fighting in parts of the eastern districts of Batticaloa and Amparai continued.

ICRC offices in Jaffna and Kilinochchi continued to carry out basic water and sanitation work at several sites hosting displaced persons.

In Batticaloa district, daily convoys into Vakarai continued, bringing food, medicines, drinking water and non-food relief items to about 35,000 displaced persons. The ICRC also continued to assess the needs of people in the Mutur and Seruvilla divisions of Trincomalee district. The organization began carrying out basic water and sanitation work at some sites hosting returnees and distributed a limited amount of relief supplies.

Health

The ICRC continued to support hospitals and other health facilities in the north and east of the country. Over the past two weeks, the ICRC provided the health authorities in Jaffna district with essential medical supplies, including medicines and dressing materials. Six severely ill patients, accompanied by a doctor, were transferred from Jaffna Teaching Hospital to Colombo on an ICRC flight. The ICRC also assisted Jaffna Teaching Hospital by transporting pathological specimens to Colombo for examination. In the Vanni region, the ICRC provided medical supplies, including stretchers and dressing material to the Mullaitivu and Kilinochchi District health services. Volunteers from the Sri Lanka Red Cross Society (SLRCS), supported by the ICRC, continued with the community-based health projects and carried out health and hygiene promotion sessions for displaced persons in Jaffna, Kilinochchi, Mullaitivu, Trincomalee and Batticaloa Districts. The ICRC also supported the SLRCS mobile health service that is providing basic health care to displaced persons in Batticaloa District.

Economic security

During the past two weeks, the ICRC has distributed essential household items and hygiene kits to more than 2,600 families (about 10,000 persons) in the districts of Vanni (Madhu, Jeyanthunagar), Mannar and Batticaloa (Panchenai, Vakarai), as well as in Vavuniya town. The organization has also been assessing the situation of the returnees in Seruvilla and Mutur division, where livelihood projects are planned for the coming months.

Water and habitat

At the request of the director of Jaffna Teaching Hospital, the ICRC is installing three rainwater tanks with a total capacity of 3,000 litres, as the calcium content of the ground water is damaging the oxygen plant and the sterilization unit. In the Vanni, the ICRC is continuing to repair hand pumps and clean wells. In Batticaloa, the organization has built another four toilets for displaced persons, bringing the total number of toilets built in Vakarai to 45. The ICRC is also supplying fuel to the Oxfam water treatment plant.

Restoring family links

The ICRC has been cooperating closely with the Sri Lanka Red Cross Society to help members of families separated by the conflict to restore and maintain contact with one another. Over the past two weeks, the ICRC collected 381 family messages and distributed 76. Since the beginning of August, more than 560 people have re-established contact with their families and more than 1,700 have registered at ICRC and Sri Lanka Red Cross offices.

Visiting detainees

Over the past two weeks, the ICRC has continued to visit people arrested for security reasons. ICRC delegates carried out 23 detention visits in which they registered or held private interviews with more than 250 detainees. Eleven Red Cross Messages were distributed to detainees and 31 were collected to be handed over to relatives of the detained.

Civilian population

Families continued to report abductions of relatives by unknown persons throughout the country. Nine cases were documented in the last two weeks. The ICRC offices in Batticaloa and Kilinochchi transported 92 bodies during the period covered by this report.

ICRC presence at crossing points

In the last two weeks, the ICRC acted as a neutral intermediary to facilitate the transfer of some 7,010 civilians at Omanthai and Uyilankulam lines.

Since June 2006, the ICRC has:

provided essential household items for about 63,000 people in conflict-affected areas, distributed 10,000 tarpaulins and 500 tents, transported hundreds of thousands of litres of drinking water, distributed dressing materials, medicines and other medical supplies to 12 hospitals and other health-care facilities in the north and east, and assisted in the medical evacuation and transfer of more than 100 wounded and sick persons;

in cooperation with other components of the International Red Cross and Red Crescent Movement, provided Muslim, Tamil and Sinhalese displaced families in Kantale, Kinniya, Seruvilla and Trincomalee town with some 5,000 hygiene kits, 1,400 baby parcels and 1,000 sets of essential household items, and built and equipped a field hospital with 80 beds in Kantale, which so far has treated 1,500 displaced people;

provided construction materials and tools to build 525 shelters in Anuradhapura district for more than 3,000 Sinhalese, in addition to arranging for machines to dig new wells and providing showers and latrines;

helped more than 220,000 people to cross the lines, and organized a convoy to bring more than 240 Sri Lankans and foreigners from Kilinochchi to Vavuniya;

regularly delivered aid to more than 16,000 internally displaced persons in Batticaloa district, including some 2,200 sets of household items and 4,000 tarpaulins over the past month (in addition, in the same district, an Italian Red Cross medical team has been running a mobile clinic with the Sri Lanka Red Cross that has treated hundreds of patients);

donated to the Ministry of Health two emergency health kits for the treatment of 20,000 persons, for use at Point Pedro Hospital in Jaffna, and supplied medical supplies to the Sri Lanka Red Cross Society's mobile clinic;

visited 571 security detainees, registered 334 cases of people reported missing after having disappeared or having allegedly been arrested, registered 199 cases of child recruitment and over 81 cases of violations of international humanitarian law, such as extra-judicial killings and attacks and ill-treatment perpetrated against civilians.

For further information, please contact:
Carla Haddad, ICRC Geneva, tel: +41 22 730 24 05 or +41 79 217 32 26
Davide Vignati, ICRC Colombo, tel: +94 11 250 33 46 or +94 77 728 96 82