Lutherans to distribute food near Sri Lanka war zone

|PIC1|Hundreds of thousands of civilians caught in Sri Lanka’s escalated civil war will soon receive food from a church-based relief group that, like many other charities and governments, is alarmed at the deteriorating humanitarian situation in the north.

Working with partners on the ground, Lutheran World Relief is responding to the crisis by distributing food baskets that contain essential items such as cooking oil, rice and beans, the US-based ministry said Friday.

"A food basket costs only about a dollar a person and can be delivered quickly,” explained Tim McCully, LWF’s vice president for international programmes. “The distribution of baskets will help sustain families as they deal with this crisis.”

More than 300,000 people have been displaced by the conflict between the Sri Lankan Government and the rebel group Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE). Another 50,000 civilians are said to be trapped in the war zones.

Aid groups say hospitals and government-operated displacement camps are overcrowded with civilians fleeing the rebel control area. Meanwhile, the Tamil Tigers said in a statement Saturday that trapped civilians face “imminent” starvation due to dwindling food stocks in the war zones.

The UN under-secretary-general for humanitarian affairs has urged a temporary ceasefire to move civilians in the war zone to safety. Thus far, the Sri Lankan government has dismissed international calls for a ceasefire. It has also barred aid groups from the war zones since last year, saying that it is too dangerous for them to enter the area.

Humanitarian aid groups mainly work in the government-run relief camps surrounding the conflict zones.

Paul Estabrooks, minister-at-large with Open Doors, said, “The challenge has been that the church of Sri Lanka is totally prepared to do humanitarian aid for these people, but it has not had the opportunity because it’s a closed-off area by government forces,” according to Mission Network News.

Estabrooks also urges a ceasefire so that humanitarian groups can help civilians caught in the conflict.

Fighting between the government and the LTTE, which many Western nations list as a terror group, has been ongoing since 1983. Sri Lanka officially ended the two-decade civil war in 2002, but violence has persisted between the two forces with a surge in violence in recent years.

LTTE says it is fighting to create a separate state for the country’s 3.1 million ethic minority Tamils, which it says is being discriminated against in Sri Lanka.

Nearly 6,500 civilians have been killed in the conflict over the past three months, according to the United Nations.