SECOND DEATH OF A SRI LANKAN REPORTED IN ISRAELI BOMBING IN LEBANON
(By Walter Jayawardhana reporting from Los Angeles)
As the second death of a Sri Lankan was reported in the Lebanon bombing by Israeli jets many more among the 80,000 Sri lankans living in that country are feared dead.
A Lebanese news website quoting the local police in the Central town of Nabatiyeh said among the dead was a Sri Lankan in that town.
The news website said in a July 19 datelined story, “Six people were killed, including a Lebanese woman and her three children, a Sri Lankan and a Sudanese national, in air bombardment on the central town of Nabatiyeh in southern Lebanon, police said.” The website did not reveal the name of the persons who died and also the Sri Lankan was a male or a female.
July 18, the same website reported, “In the early hours of Tuesday, a woman, her two daughters and Sri Lankan maid were killed and four others wounded in an air strike on their villa in the coastal city of Tyre.”
It did not reveal the names of the dead who were killed by the Israeli bombing of this civilian house.
As the relentless Israeli offensive enters its second week, the death toll continued to rise reaching almost 280 in Lebanon. Most of the dead are civilians caught in the ferocious fighting, Lebanese reports said.
Nearly 80,000 Sri Lankans, who are mostly employed as house maids in the war ravaged country, are distributed all over Lebanon and due to the transportation difficulties caused by bombing of roads are reportedly unable to come to their embassy for help. Many are feared stranded.
Israeli Combat jets also bombarded the Beirut-Damascus highway, cutting off the main land route used by people trying to flee, and blocking a convoy of ambulance, news reports said. Before the damage some Indians were evacuated in buses to Syria along this road.
Already the Sri Lanka Embassy was doing its best to care for Sri lankan people who are coming to the embassy for help. But the biggest difficulty is since a general transportation breakdown in the country people cannot reach their embassy in Beirut.
Another difficulty is that nearly half of the Sri Lankan people in Lebanon do not have any visas and they stay and work illegally. For any evacuation some kind of travel documents have to be prepared, as an emergency measure, embassy officials said.
All people who could reach the embassy for help are cared for and sent to Caritas care center. Sri Lankan people who were in jails were released to be evacuated by the Lebanese government. Sister Leela, a Sri Lankan nun who is working at the care center of Caritas told the BBC’s Sinhala service that there were 200 women in the women’s detention center. At least three women were there convicted of murder of Lebanese women, some spending 15 year jail terms, she said. All the released women from the jail are now cared for at the refugee center by Caritas. There had been many males also at these jails who were released on the request of the Sri Lanka embassy. Some refugees who escaped the ravage of war are housed in the embassy itself.
The International Organization of Migration(IOM) has rushed its representatives to Lebanon and are expected to attend to the matter of evacuation of stranded Sri lankans in Lebanon. The Sri Lanka government has already appealed to the IOM organization, the United Nations and other friendly countries to help evacuation of the Sri Lankan refugees.
Sister Leela of the Caritas appealed to the stranded Sri lankans to communicate with one another in the areas they live, walk out of the bombed areas and gather at some places so that they could be picked up by vehicles arranged by Caritas to be brought to the refugee camp run by the organization.
Since all sea and land routes are blocked some embassy staff thought that they could be airlifted with international help.
