Red Cross demands halt to artillery fire after at least nine people killed

The shelling of a Sri Lankan hospital has refocused attention on the continued heavy fighting and growing humanitarian crisis gripping the country.

At least nine people died and 20 were injured when several artillery shells struck the hospital in Puthukkudiyiruppu.

The International Committee of the Red Cross demanded that both sides stop the shelling, and stated that "wounded and sick people, medical personnel and medical facilities are all protected by international humanitarian law. Under no circumstance may they be directly attacked."

The Sri Lankan military is trying to force the Tamil Tigers into an ever smaller patch of the north-east, leading to intense and bloody fighting and fears of a rising civilian death toll. Analysts believe it could be the last stand of the rebels.

Western media are banned from the war zone and the government is pressurising news organisations, claiming their reporting has been too sympathetic to the rebels.

The website Tamilnet, which claims to report the Tamil point of view, says the targeting of the hospital was deliberate.

Some see Tamilnet as being close to the Tamil Tigers, who have fought a civil war with the Sri Lankan government since 1983.

Tamilnet says the attack "was a premeditated massacre as the military was given instructions by the … defence secretary, Gotabhaya Rajapaksa, to isolate hospitals from civilian access by artillery barrage".

Tamilnet also claims that government bombers attacked civilian refugees on Sunday in Moongkilaa'ru, using "cluster munitions fitted to artillery shells in its indiscriminate barrage on civilian refuges".

The website claims 13 civilian bodies were recovered in a "completely burned state, beyond identification".

The Sri Lankan army website celebrates what it claims is the capture of a rebel training camp and haul of weapons which it says is the biggest ever.

The site says the army "captured a Black Tiger camp complex in the east of Visuamadu Saturday", by troops "who struck a devastating blow to Tigers leaving no room for the terrorists to remove even their fellow dead bodies and sophisticated weapons".

The army website lists the details of the arms haul: "Nine mortar launchers of five different caliber of 120mm, 81mm, 82mm, 80mm and 60mm, six Multi Purpose Machine Guns (MPMG ), two thermo baric launchers, twenty pistols, three Rocket Propeller Guns (RPG), seven claymore mines, one improvised claymore mine, eighteen T-56 weapons, one sniper gun, eight Rocket Propeller Gun (RPG) rounds, fifty-nine hand grenades, one tripod, thirty-five Arul-type bombs, one hundred detonators, one radio set, thirty-five gas masks, forty-eight helmets, thirty-five pouches, a large stock of new LTTE uniforms and twelve LTTE dead bodies were found from inside of the camp complex."

With the noose tightening around the Tamil Tigers, the official Sri Lankan government website reports the president's call for the "terrorists", as he calls them, to surrender or "face grave danger of being captured by the government armed forces".

President Mahinda Rajapaksa's demand was made to a weekend rally, and the government website says that liberating the north from "the cruel grip of terrorism and creating of an environment where all committees could live without fear and suspicion was his foremost responsibility and obligation".