UN Satellite Images Show Damage in Sri Lanka

The BBC has images from the UN. The image above, from the BBC story, shows craters in the government-designated safe zone.

UPDATE: Palitha Kohona, the Foreign Secretary of Sri Lanka, responds to the leaked images:

“As long as the retaliation is proportionate, it is perfectly legitimate and what we did exactly was locate these guns and retaliate against those guns,” Mr Kohona told al Jazeera television.

“But I would challenge anybody to say that these shell holes were created once the civilians moved into the area and it became occupied by civilians.”

The Government declared the area a “no-fire zone” on February 12, urging civilians to seek shelter there, and has repeatedly denied using heavy artillery or aerial bombs to attack it after that date.

Mr Kohona said it was unclear from the images when the craters and other damage was caused, and questioned the UN’s ability to provide such detailed analysis.

“Why is the United Nations engaging in a spying mission on Sri Lanka?” he said.

And more on the images and the UN report based on them:

The internal UN report was compiled by Unosat, which provides satellite imagery to help UN agencies during natural disasters and other humanitarian operations.

It is based on detailed images taken between February 5 and April 19 - the day before the army breached an earthern fortificaton, triggering an exodus of more than 100,000 civilians from the “no-fire zone”.

But the report states clearly that the new damage inside the “no-fire zone” was caused between March 15 and April 19.

Francesco Pisano, the manager of the Unosat programme, told The Times that his analysts had compared several images taken in February, March and April to identify new craters and other damage.

He said the analysts concluded that some of the damage could only have been caused by aerial bombing because of the apparent accuracy of the strikes and the size of the craters.

He declined to say which side was responsible, but the army says it destroyed the last of the Tigers’ small air wing when it shot down two of its planes on February 20.