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COLOMBO, Sri Lanka-The United Nations said Monday that "many" civilians have been killed in recent fighting in Sri Lanka's civil war and called the situation for thousands of displaced people trapped in the northern conflict zone a crisis.In recent weeks, government troops pushed the Tamil Tigers out of the de facto state they ran in the north, forced the rebels into a broad retreat and boxed them into a small patch of jungle along with hundreds of thousands of civilians. The military captured the rebels' final stronghold of Mullaittivu on Sunday and fought heavy battles with the separatists in the jungles throughout Monday.With the war zone shrinking and a huge population of civilians in the area, the situation has grown desperate in recent days, U.N. resident coordinator Neil Buhne told The Associated Press on Monday."There have been many civilians killed over the last two days," he said. "It's really a crisis now."Buhne said until recently both sides in the fighting worked hard to avoid civilian casualties."But in the current phase, with such a level of fighting and with so many people around, unless there is very, very close attention to it, it's almost inevitable," he said.Human rights groups and diplomats have expressed growing concerns about the safety of the civilians in the north in recent days.Many have accused the Tamil Tigers of preventing civilians from fleeing the war zone, while the government has said the rebels hoped to use the civilians as human shields. By RAVI NESSMAN, Associated Press Writer
As in the days of Noah...
