The United Nations' top humanitarian official headed to Sri Lanka to seek access to some 50,000 civilians trapped in the country's war zone, while the Tamil Tiger rebels warned today of «imminent» starvation among noncombatants, AP reported. Reports of chaos and suffering in the northern war zone have increased in recent days as the Sri Lankan military pushed forward with its offensive to destroy the separatist insurgency and end the Indian Ocean island nation's bloody quarter-century civil war. U.N. Under-Secretary General for Humanitarian Affairs John Holmes, who begins a three-day mission to the island Sunday, said he hopes to persuade the Sri Lankan government to suspend its assault and allow a humanitarian team into the conflict zone. He said Saturday that the trapped civilians are suffering from a «very high» casualty rate, and from lack of food, clean water and medical supplies. The U.N. says nearly 6,500 civilians have been killed in the fighting over the past three months. «The situation of those people is very dire and that's why we need to find a way to stop the fighting and get them out of there so we can look after them properly,» he told Associated Press Television News in Thailand en route to Sri Lanka. More than 100,000 civilians have fled the tiny coastal strip still under rebel control since Monday, flooding hospitals in the north and overwhelming government-run displacement camps, according to aid workers.
