NEW DELHI — Downpours in northern Sri Lanka have flooded camps housing more than 250,000 people displaced by the fighting between the government and the Tamil Tigers, according to aid officials.
The rain, which fell heavily for much of the afternoon on Saturday, sent rivers of muck cascading between tightly packed rows of flimsy shelters, overflowed latrines and sent hundreds of families scurrying for higher ground.
The flooding raised fears for the safety of the displaced, who are being held in closed camps guarded by soldiers. Monsoon rains are expected to begin in little more than a month, and many aid groups worry that the hastily built camps will not survive the inundation.
“If only three or four hours of rain cause this much chaos, only imagine what a full monsoon can cause,” said David White, country director for Oxfam.
The camps occupy vast tracts of formerly forested land near the northern town of Vavuniya. Because the ground on which many of the camps were built was cleared of trees recently, the soil is soft and porous. It turns into mud almost instantly, making it nearly impossible to get trucks through to deliver food, water and medicine, aid officials said.
Life in the camps was already tough, but the rain has made it almost unbearable, according to people who have visited the camps in the last 24 hours. The pegs holding down plastic tents have come loose, leaving some families without shelter. Latrines have collapsed, sending waste spilling into nearby rivers. Silt has clogged water treatment plants that are essential for providing drinking water and preventing the spread of waterborne disease.
Groundviews, a citizen journalism Web site in Sri Lanka, published photographs that showed a grim scene of mud and squalor. Aid workers said that they were able to restore some services, like food deliveries, and get temporary shelters for families that lost their tents.
The people in the camps are displaced ethnic Tamils. Most were trapped, along with the last fighters of the Tamil Tiger separatist group, on a narrow strip of land in northwestern Sri Lanka. Government troops wiped out the senior leadership of the rebel group after a fierce battle in May. Thousands of civilians died alongside the fighters, according to the United Nations.
Those who survived fled to camps around Vavuniya, where they have been held ever since. The government has said it cannot allow the displaced people to go home because the areas they fled are sown with land mines, and because Tamil Tiger fighters remain hidden among them. Human rights organizations and several Western governments have criticized the government’s handling of the displaced, calling it tantamount to internment.
As the heavy rains approach, the government will need to move much faster to get displaced people out of the camps, Mr. White said. The government has pledged to get most of the displaced out of the camps by the end of the year.
“Really, we have run out of options and the only option that is left is to speed up the resettlement process,” Mr. White said.
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