refugees

U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon toured Sri Lanka's biggest refugee camp Saturday and said the country did not have the resources to deal with the tens of thousands who fled fighting with Tamil Tiger rebels.

Ban told Rajapaksa the U.N. and other international humanitarian agencies needed immediate and unimpeded access to camps that are housing 290,000 people who escaped rebel-held areas as a military onslaught bore down on the separatists.

Sri Lanka’s government ignored mounting calls Friday by international relief organizations for greater access to the country’s swelling refugee camps, as the military continued to weed out suspected former Tamil Tiger rebels hiding among civilians.

People have been celebrating on the streets of Colombo - flags hoisted, fire crackers going off. But those who fled the fighting in the north-east face an uncertain future after months of trauma. Tony Senewiratne, national director for Habitat for Humanity in Sri Lanka, has just returned from a camp for displaced people and describes the humanitarian challenges ahead.

U.N. aid agencies say they are being denied access to some camps for displaced people in northern Sri Lanka, hindering their ability to help Tamil civilians displaced by the recent fighting between government troops and Tamil Tiger rebels.

The U.N. refugee agency says the number of civilians who have fled the fighting in northern Sri Lanka over the last few months has now reached 280,000. This includes an estimated 80,000 people who have left the former combat zone in the last three days.

"People are arriving into camps sick, malnourished and some with untended wounds of war," UNICEF Executive Director Ann Veneman said in a written statement. "... Water and sanitation needs are critical."

About 65,000 people have fled what had been the fighting zone in northeast Sri Lanka over the past few days, the United Nations said Monday, bringing to 265,000 the number of internally displaced people.

U.N. Security Council members see no point withholding an IMF loan or taking other steps to punish Sri Lanka, the council's president said, the same day Sri Lanka's president rejected international calls for a ceasefire with rebels.

"I have not heard anyone suggesting that," Mexican Ambassador Claude Heller, president of the 15-nation council, told reporters on Thursday after an informal session on Sri Lanka.