UN condemns Sri Lanka 'bloodbath'
The United Nations called the shelling of Tamils northern Sri Lanka a "bloodbath" with hundreds of civilians killed.
The artillery attack - which lasted from Saturday evening into Sunday morning - killed at least 378 civilians and wounded more than a thousand more, according to a health official inside rebel-controlled territory.
A rebel-linked Web site blamed the attack on the government, while the military accused the beleaguered Tamil Tigers of briefly shelling their own territory to gain international sympathy and force a cease-fire.
The TamilNet Web site said many more civilians were killed in a second attack and that the death toll from the two days of violence was likely in the thousands.
That attack marked the bloodiest assault on ethnic Tamil civilians since the civil war flared again more than three years ago. Health officials said a hospital in the war zone was overwhelmed by casualties, and the death toll was expected to sharply rise.
"The U.N. has consistently warned against the bloodbath scenario as we've watched the steady increase in civilian deaths over the last few months," U.N. spokesman Gordon Weiss said Monday.
"The large-scale killing of civilians over the weekend, including the deaths of more than 100 children, shows that that bloodbath has become a reality."
U.N. figures compiled last month showed that nearly 6,500 civilians had been killed in three months of fighting this year as the government drove the rebels out of their strongholds in the north and vowed to end the war.
About 50,000 civilians are crowded into the 2.4 mile- (4 kilometre) long strip of coast along with the separatists, who have been fighting for 25 years for a homeland for minority Tamils.
The government has brushed off international calls for a humanitarian truce, saying any pause in the fighting would give the rebels time to regroup.
Bodies were laid out in rows on the mud outside the hospital, some of their faces covered with mats and sheets, according to photos from the area. One small boy was stripped to the waist, his head covered in a bloody bandage and his mouth agape.
The hospital was struggling to cope with the 1,122 wounded civilians amid a shortage of physicians, nurses and aides made treatment difficult.
More than half the hospital staff did not turn up for work because their homes were attacked and many of the wounded went untreated for more than 24 hours.
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