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More flee Sri Lanka war zone

(Agencies)
Updated: 2009-02-07 07:58

More than 2,200 people have fled Sri Lanka's war zone in the last two days as the military on Friday vowed a rapid finish to the 25-year-old war while protecting thousands of trapped civilians.

Fighting is concentrated around a shrinking circle of jungle in the island's northeast, where the military said it has all but surrounded the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam separatists.

Trapped inside the 175 sq km battlefield are tens of thousands of civilians, whom aid agencies, the government and a growing list of nations have said are being held in the war zone by the Tigers. But they have started to come out in the past three weeks.

"Today, 600 people have come up until now," military spokesman Brigadier Udaya Nanayakkara said. On Thursday, 1,637 escaped the fighting, he said.

Aid agencies say there are 250,000 people trapped in the battle zone; the government says the number is half of that.

Late on Thursday, President Mahinda Rajapaksa told UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon that the military operation would proceed while ensuring civilians are kept safe, the president's office said in a statement.

The Tigers, once widely regarded as one of the world's most ruthlessly effective guerrilla organizations, are now nearing defeat, analysts say. Rajapaksa this week said the ground war could be over in days.