India presses for Sri Lanka truce as casualties rise

By David Gray

PUTTUMATALAN, Sri Lanka (Reuters) - Indian envoys met Sri Lanka's president on Friday after New Delhi demanded a truce in the closing phase of a 25-year war which U.N. data says may have killed almost 6,500 people in the last three months.

A few kms from the front, thousands of refugees languished in the blazing tropical sun awaiting transport from the battlezone, where the military is fighting to deal a death blow to the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE).

Aid agencies warned that those still trapped in the battlezone had little access to food, water and medical care.

The United States urged the rebels to lay down their arms and surrender to a third party and for the Sri Lankan government to allow a U.N. humanitarian team into the no-fire zone.

Explosions boomed and smoke billowed from the remaining battlefield, formerly an army-declared no-fire zone but now all that remains of the self-declared state the LTTE has fought since the early 1970s to create for Sri Lanka's minority Tamils.

"We are clearing mines and other entrapments. The progress has almost stopped because we have come across these things," 58th Army Division commander Brigadier Shavendra Silva told Reuters in Puttumatalan, on the northeastern coast.

The military said more than 108,000 people had poured out of the dwindling rebel area since Monday, when troops blasted an earth barrier the LTTE built to block movement in or out of it.

Diplomatic pressure over the war has boiled over this week with the U.N. Security Council, the United States, India and others demanding Sri Lanka stop its offensive and the LTTE surrender to avert civilian casualties.