WORLD BRIEFING / SRI LANKA
Sri Lankan government forces fired barrages of artillery, killing at least 11 civilians a day after it pledged to stop such attacks because of the risk to innocent people, a rebel-linked website and a local doctor said.
A military spokesman, Brig. Udaya Nanayakkara, denied the accusation. Government troops were pushing forward with their fight to destroy the Tamil Tiger rebels, he said, but they were using only small arms.
The dispute came as Sri Lanka rebuffed intense international pressure to accept a temporary truce to allow tens of thousands of trapped civilians to escape the fighting.
The foreign ministers of Britain and France were en route to further press for a cease-fire.
The government, which accuses the Tamil Tigers of holding the civilians as human shields, said any pause in the battle would allow the rebels to regroup just as they face certain defeat in their quarter-century separatist war.
Instead, it promised to stop using artillery attacks, airstrikes and other heavy weapons to avoid harming civilians trapped in the rebel-held region.
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