Sri Lanka war zone hospital 'hit'; 49 dead

COLOMBO (AFP) - Sri Lanka’s Tamil Tiger rebels accused government forces of killing at least 49 people Tuesday in an artillery and mortar attack on a hospital, a charge fiercely denied by the island’s military.
The accusation came amid mounting international outrage over large-scale civilian deaths, with the European Union calling for UN Security Council action and the US telling Sri Lanka to stop using heavy weapons.
A spokesman for the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE), whose fighters are battling to defend a tiny strip of coastal jungle, said a makeshift hospital packed with survivors of weekend attacks was hit by government forces.
“Heavy artillery and mortar attacks this morning hit the hospital and 49 people were killed there,” rebel spokesman S Puleedevan said by telephone. “Most of them were those injured in Sunday’s attacks.”
The pro-rebel Tamilnet website said the number of killed had since risen to 49, and that 55 patients were wounded. The LTTE says more than 2,000 civilians were killed in similar alleged Sri Lankan army attacks on Sunday.
Sri Lanka’s Defence Ministry however blamed any civilian deaths on the rebels - who it accused of firing heavy weapons from inside an area declared to be a “civilian safety zone.”
The military insists it is not using heavy guns, and says the Tigers are keeping people hostage to use them as human shields and shooting those who try to escape.“We are not using heavy artillery or any heavy weapons. If not for the civilians, it would take about 72 hours” to defeat the LTTE, military spokesman Brigadier Udaya Nanayakkara told reporters.