Shelling kills at least 50 at Sri Lanka hospital, staff says

Artillery shells tore through a hospital packed with wounded civilians in Sri Lanka’s war zone for a second day Wednesday, killing at least 50 people, setting an ambulance on fire and forcing the medical staff to huddle in bunkers for safety, doctors said.

Health workers at the makeshift facility said they were so overwhelmed by the crush of wounded and the unrelenting shelling of the area that they could do little but hand out gauze and bandages to the roughly 1,000 people waiting for treatment.

The shelling of the hospital came as the government marched on with its offensive to destroy the reeling Tamil Tiger rebels and end their 25-year-old quest for a separate homeland on the island off the southeastern coast of India.

There has been a wave of artillery bombardments across the war zone that began over the weekend and has barely let up in five days, health workers said.

The weekend attacks alone may have killed as many as 1,000 people, doctors said.

The government says its troops are not responsible for the shelling and that the military has not fired heavy weapons in the area in weeks.

But Human Rights Watch says satellite images and witness testimony contradict that claim.

It accuses both sides of using the estimated 50,000 civilians trapped in the tiny coastal strip controlled by the rebels as “cannon fodder.”

The shelling was so intense Wednesday that a Red Cross ferry waiting offshore to deliver food and evacuate the wounded had to turn back for a second day, the agency said.

President Obama on Wednesday called for an end to the violence and for steps to alleviate the civilian suffering. He pressed Sri Lanka’s government to “stop the indiscriminate shelling” that has killed hundreds of civilians and give United Nations humanitarian teams access to the wounded.

He also called on the rebels to lay down their weapons and release civilian captives. He said the situation was a humanitarian crisis that could become a catastrophe.