Reuters

WITH loudhailers hitched to the tallest palmyrah trees, Tamil-speaking soldiers of the Sri Lanka army had for weeks been urging civilians inside a dwindling strip of territory held by the rebel Tamil Tigers to break through their cordon and flee. But since April 20th, when the army burst an embankment at Putumattalan, the authorities have been overwhelmed by the thousands pouring out. The Tigers' defences were less to keep the army out than to fence the civilians in.

The government had expected an exodus far smaller than the one which came, bringing 114,520 civilians in the next nine days. Since January an estimated 190,000 have fled. The UN's assessment that there were originally around 250,000 trapped civilians, dismissed as exaggerated by the government, now looks roughly right.

By the middle of this week, the UN was maintaining that 50,000 non-combatants remained in the Tiger-held areas, though the government said 15,000-20,000. The army, which after two years of pitched battles has cornered the rebels into a 5km (three-mile) stretch of land, says it has slowed down the offensive because of the difficulty of distinguishing rebels from civilians. They wear similar clothes. As one soldier in Putumattalan puts it, the only difference is the terrorist's weapon.

On April 27th Mahinda Rajapaksa, Sri Lanka's president, said he had told the security forces to stop using heavy-calibre guns, combat aircraft and aerial weapons that might cause civilian causalities. This followed the announcement by the Tigers the previous day of a unilateral ceasefire, promptly dismissed by Mr Rajapaksa as a ploy. TamilNet, a pro-Tiger website, accuses the army of continued fierce shelling despite the claims of a halt.

The Tigers have tightened their net around the remaining civilians, as their only hope of escaping a full-scale military assault. But some are still wriggling through. Struggling to cope with a flood of weak, traumatised and often injured people, the government has called for urgent international assistance. The UN, which launched a $155m appeal for Sri Lanka in February, will raise its target higher.

Most of the displaced are crammed into 32 internment camps in Vavuniya, with some sent to Jaffna and Trincomalee. On April 28th a spokesman for the UN's High Commissioner for Refugees said people at these sites had reached “breaking-point”. Some unfortunates are staying out in the open, in sweltering heat. Overcrowding is acute, and the UNHCR has asked the government to make more room available.

Conditions are certainly better than the hellish ones the civilians were enduring in the supposed no-fire zone. But Mahinda Samarasinghe, the minister for disaster relief, has admitted shortcomings in the government's response. He said the real challenge was to resettle people in their villages as soon as possible.

Children are among the worst hit by the fighting. An internal UN document reports that of 6,500 civilians killed since February, over 500 were children. It estimates the injured at 14,000, including more than 1,700 children. The UN does not apportion blame for the deaths. Survivors have confirmed that the Tigers executed or maimed some of those who tried to escape. But activists argue that this does not absolve the army of its duty to try to spare civilians. As one puts it, a democratically elected government is judged by higher standards.

Foreign aid is coming, but not without strictures. While the army continues its relentless advance, the government is facing international calls for a ceasefire, even a temporary one, to allow trapped civilians to leave. It is also battling criticism over its refusal to let a UN team enter the no-fire zone to make an assessment, and fending off charges of breaking humanitarian law.

Some of the fiercest criticism is coming from India, where Sri Lanka is an issue in the ongoing, month-long general election, especially in the Tamil-majority state of Tamil Nadu. M. Karunanidhi, the chief minister there, this week called off a brief hunger strike when the Sri Lankan government announced the end of combat operations. Heretically for a leading Indian politician, his predecessor and main rival, Jayalalitha, has called for a separate Tamil homeland, to be “carved out” of Sri Lanka. Military victory for the Sri Lankan government seems tantalisingly close. But it may pay a heavy diplomatic price.