UN says shelling by goverment troops killed over 10,000 civilians - Rajapakse Regime Denies it

A UN panel has said widespread shelling by the Sri Lankan government killed most of the tens of thousands of civilians it says died during the final phase of the 26-year-long war, in 2009.

In a report on possible war crimes in the last months of the war, the panel also accuses Tamil rebels of using civilians as human shields. It is calling for an independent international investigation.

But Sri Lanka has rejected the report's finding as biased and fraudulent.

It denies that tens of thousands of civilians were killed in the months leading up to the government's victory over Tamil separatists in May 2009.

"The Sri Lankan army is not responsible and [the] Sri Lankan government is not responsible," government spokesman Lakshman Hulugalle told the BBC.

"We never shelled or we never bombed. We never targeted innocent civilians. It's a wrong allegation and we can prove it," he said.


The highly controversial document was the result of a 10-month process of gathering evidence by the three-member panel, which was not allowed into Sri Lanka.

Their report paints a brutal image of the final offensive on the rebel-held enclave in northern Sri Lanka between January and May 2009.

It said that hospitals, UN centres and ships belonging to international aid group the Red Cross were deliberately shelled by government forces.

It describes prisoners being shot in the head and women raped, while the Tamil Tiger rebels (LTTE) used 330,000 civilians as human shields, and shot those who tried to escape.

The UN experts said there were "credible allegations, which if proven, indicate that a wide range of serious violations of international humanitarian law and international rights law was committed both by the government of Sri Lanka and the LTTE, some of which would amount to war crimes and crimes against humanity".

Source ; http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-south-asia-13190576