The International Committee of the Red Cross said Thursday that its workers have been barred from the country's largest refugee camp and cannot distribute aid to or monitor the well-being of some 130,000 displaced residents.

The outspoken criticism by the normally discreet aid organization came a day after the United Nations pressed Sri Lanka's government to allow unfettered access to the war zone in the country's north. Aid groups must be able to evacuate any civilians still trapped in the north after the defeat of the Tamil Tigers rebel group earlier this week, officials said.

But Red Cross workers have not been allowed to enter Menik Farm, Sri Lanka's biggest refugee camp, since last weekend, the ICRC's deputy head of operations for South Asia, Monica Zanarelli, said in a statement posted on the agency's Web site.

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Western nations face an uphill battle to establish any investigation of war crimes in Sri Lanka. The UN Human Rights Council has agreed to hold a special session in Geneva next week on alleged war crimes by Tamil rebels and Sri Lankan government forces, but European diplomats are struggling to muster support for a strong statement at the end of the meeting.

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Birds have now stopped singing  in a land called Vanni.  Sun, moon and the stars in the sky have hidden their faces. Angel of death flew over the skies of Vanni and took the lives of more than twenty five thousand innocent Tamil men, women and children in a single day.  

Thousands of wounded are still crying out for help. They are bleeding to death on the streets. They have touched neither water nor food for days. Nobody has come to rescue them. Those who fight for the rights of the animals and those who preach about Buddha and Mahatma have no compassion for the dying Tamils. 

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The violence in Sri Lanka was close to a bloody conclusion last night as the country's armed forces sought to destroy the last pocket of Tamil Tiger fighters in defiance of international pleas for a halt to the fighting and accusations from the UN that they had triggered a bloodbath.

While leaders of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam were reported to be preparing to kill themselves rather than be captured, explosions reverberated around the tiny coastal strip where as many as 80,000 civilians remained trapped alongside the cornered rebels.

Humanitarian aid workers were in despair as sporadic reports filtered out of thousands of civilians killed inside the "no fire zone", the government-designated haven where non-combatants were supposed to be able to escape the fighting.

"It is hard to think of a worse place on earth to be right now than on that stretch of beach," said James Elder, the Unicef spokesman in Sri Lanka, as he struggled to contain his emotions.

The final assault went ahead in spite of a warning from British Prime Minister Gordon Brown to Sri Lanka that "there will be consequences for its actions". Downing Street said Brown had made several phone calls during the day to Sri Lankan president Mahinda Rajapaksa, urging him to bring the violence to an end. His pleas were ignored.

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Against all evidence, the Sri Lankan government claims that the shelling in which as many as 1,000 ethnic Tamil civilians have died is not even occurring. Fleeing Tamils who escape "safe zones" are placed in military-run camps where they face food shortages and systematic sexual abuse. In the past two weeks, the Sri Lankan government -- one of the world's most hostile where journalists are concerned -- has expelled a British news team that reported on the abysmal camp conditions and the abuse of Tamil women fleeing the war zone.

The U.N. Security Council's suggestion that the Tamil rebels simply surrender is neither realistic nor helpful. Rather, the United Nations should invoke the "responsibility to protect" doctrine and deploy an international monitoring group with the aim of creating conditions in which both sides would be forced to agree to a cease-fire.

Former president Bill Clinton has said that, when she was first lady, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton wanted the United States to intervene in the Rwandan genocide of 1994 and that his administration's failure to act was one of his biggest regrets. Today, President Obama and Ms. Clinton can help restore our international reputation as a peacemaker by intervening in a similar conflict before it reaches the same magnitude.

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"The most terrible thing that I have seen was when a mother had a bullet go through her breast and she was dead and the baby was still on the other side of the breast and the baby was drinking her milk, and that really affected me. I was at that place where it happened."

There is just too much to take. Children have lost parents, parents have lost children, it's just a common thing now.

[The shelling] is definitely coming from the government side, that can be sure, because it is only a small area on the LTTE side and from the sound and from the distance I can surely say it is from the government side.

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