Escape from Tigers' den

Trying to quiet her crying infant son, the young mother grabbed her 11-year-old's hand and told him to follow her.

Starting out at dusk, they spent hours hiding in the jungle terrain, crouching amid the crossfire between the Sri Lankan army and Tamil Tiger rebels.

Like thousands of other civilians stuck in the middle of the seemingly final battles of this civil war, Sashi Kumari Selvarajha's family was struggling to flee across the front lines, hoping for safety, she said through tears. But just as they cross the line, she said, rebel forces open fire.

“We started running on a Monday night. But we didn't think it was safe. So we stopped to sleep in the jungle.

"As the sun rose, we fled again. But my husband and mother-in-law got killed,'' said a distraught Selvarajha, 31, as she unloaded her bags at a crowded camp for the war-displaced in government-held Vavuniya district, where 2,000 civilians arrived on a recent Wednesday.

Hers is a rare first-hand account of the flight of thousands of civilians to this heavily fortified town of Vavuniya.

Most civilians who flee are put into military-run camps that officially do not allow outsiders.

Stone-faced and red-eyed relatives line up behind sandbags, coils of barbed wire and machine-gun nests as soldiers check their papers before they can find missing loved ones.

As the army continues its offensive to end the 25-year-long war, the government has come under increasing international pressure to halt its offensive and allow about 250,000 civilians trapped in the Wanni region safe passage.

The government has refused and says the number of trapped civilians is lower.

It argues that the Tigers are using civilians as human shields, a claim that the rebels deny but that diplomats and human rights workers agree is taking place.

Letting up on the fighting would allow the rebels to escape along with the displaced, the government has said.

The government says thousands of civilians have fled the ever-shrinking coastal strip controlled by the Tigers, now estimated at about 150 square kilometres.

In Vavuniya, traumatised civilians said the fighting had left them confused.

John Manni, 38, spent a harrowing day recently trying to decide on which side to stay in Vallipunam, a forested area between the army and rebel lines.

He believed the government side would be safest. But as his family crossed the front lines, his 12-year-old niece, two uncles and an aunt were killed. He isn't sure who did the firing.

The government has largely sealed off the war zone to journalists, so reports have been impossible to verify.

The refugee camps have also been closed to journalists, although recently aid workers and visitors have been given some access.

The Tigers accuse the government of waging a genocide against ethnic Tamils — who make up about 18 per cent of the island nation's population of 21 million people — in the north and east of the country.

They say the international community should be aware of the “false propaganda of the Sri Lankan state'', according to TamilNet.

“People wander from place to place seeking refuge and are forced to lead a life worse than animals in the marsh and jungles,'' the LTTE's political division said in a statement. “They are being shot.''

Diplomatic sources said the Tamil Tigers have prevented civilians from leaving for three reasons. First, the civilians act as a human shield for the rebels.

Also, they are a potential pool of conscripts and the rebel group's only real hope of survival now that large numbers of their own people have been killed.

Finally, the civilian suffering could embolden the Tamil diaspora and others to force a ceasefire on the government.

The conflict has also raised a problem for those trying to help fleeing civilians, international aid workers in Vavuniya said.

Some in the government worry that rebels are mixing among the civilian population.

Aid workers and some Tamil activists are concerned about government plans to create long-term “welfare villages'', where refugees would live for up to three years.

The government has said it needs that much time so troops could clear mines and finish fighting but experts warn of alienating an already fearful Tamil population.

“Sri Lanka has an opportunity here to reach out to the Tamils in the camps and not turn them into cages,'' said Kumar Rupasinghe, chairman of the Foundation for Co-Existence in Colombo.