30 killed in Sri Lanka 'safe zone'

At least 30 people were killed in Sri Lanka's northeast after the military allegedly shelled a "safe zone" it set up to protect civilians, local health officials said.

A makeshift hospital and village inside the 32-square-kilometre zone were shelled so intensely Thursday morning that health officials reported having difficulty counting bodies due to dismemberments, said Kandasamy Tharmakulasingham, a local health official. 

Also Thursday, the military announced it had captured a building Tamil Tiger rebels were using as their main operations centre.

On Wednesday, the military dropped leaflets throughout a territory in the northeast held by the rebels, announcing the establishment of a "safe zone" on the edge of the territory that rebels wouldn't attack. Civilians would then be transferred across front lines.

But hours after the leaflets were dropped, two shells hit the makeshift hospital located in a school in Vallipunam, part of the safe zone. No one was injured in that incident, said Tharmakulasingham.

In Thursday morning's attack at least 30 were killed, including five hospital patients, and another 117 people were injured, said Dr. Thurairaja Varatharaja, the district's top health official.

"There are a lot of bodies elsewhere, but they have not collected those bodies," he said, adding that the shelling was ongoing.

The shells came from the government-controlled area near the town of Oddusuddan, he said.

Other shelling on Tuesday and Wednesday killed at least 37 civilians, bringing the total death toll to 67, said Varatharaja. He said the toll includes the number of bodies brought to the morgue, but some relatives buried other bodies that were badly torn apart.

Military spokesman Brig. Udaya Nanayakkara denied the military hit a hospital or a civilian village.

"We have demarcated the safety zone, and we didn't fire into that area," he said.

Independent accounts of the fighting are not available because journalists are barred from the war zone.

International aid groups have expressed increasing concern about hundreds of thousands of civilians living in the rebel-held area and accuse the group of forcing civilians to stay there to act as a human shield. The Tamil Tigers deny the allegation.

Meanwhile, government troops said they've captured what appeared to be the rebels' main operation centre, said Nanayakkara, though it appeared rebels had set up at a new location before the army moved in.

The Tamil Tigers have been engaged in a violent campaign for independence since the early 1980s. More than 70,000 people have been killed in the conflict.