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Sri Lanka

Sri Lanka truce monitors pull back after fighting

By Peter Apps
COLOMBO, Aug 21 (Reuters) - Sri Lanka's foreign ceasefire monitoring mission will temporarily withdraw to the capital, it said on Monday, as aid staff and officials loaded a first ship headed for the besieged northern Jaffna peninsula.

The mission had been designed to monitor a 2002 ceasefire, but government troops and Tamil Tiger rebels have been on the offensive for weeks, and the monitors stuck in the middle.

The Sri Lanka Monitoring Mission (SLMM) had already been due to lose more than half its 57 members after the Tigers demanded staff from European Union states Denmark, Finland and Sweden leave after the EU banned them as terrorists.

The mission said the outgoing mission chief, Swedish Major General Ulf Henricsson, had decided that with both sides denying the monitors access to the battlefield, it was best to withdraw.

"This will allow the SLMM to focus its full attention on ensuring that the scaled-down mission is safely and securely reorganised under new Norwegian and Icelandic leadership," a statement said.

A Norwegian general will take charge.

Meanwhile a first aid ship was due to sail under a Red Cross flag from Colombo on Monday, but rain delayed loading and officials said she would hopefully depart Tuesday. Many Jaffna residents have registered with government and Red Cross officials to get out, but the current plan is to evacuate only a few hundred with foreign passports as well as some aid staff -- probably on a Red Cross-flagged ferry later this week.

More than 160,000 people have fled their homes, and basic commodities are running out in Jaffna after road, sea and air links have been cut by fighting.

Exact body counts are non-existent, but diplomats and analysts say it is clear hundreds are dead.

"My regular customers come each morning, but I can't satisfy their needs," said 53-year-old Jaffna grocery store owner Chellaiah Ramantahan. "I've run out of lentils, sugar, flour... From tomorrow I'm planning to close down."