A SEVEN-YEAR-OLD Tamil girl with a severe leg injury was sharing a hospital bed yesterday with her elder sister, who had burns to her face. Their mother was dead and their father was in intensive care with a 50% chance of survival.

The children, their names lost in a hospital overwhelmed by trauma victims, were two of thousands being treated in Vavuniya, just outside the conflict zone where Sri Lanka’s Tamil Tigers are making their last stand.

Emaciated, dehydrated and with terror etched on their faces, more than 100,000 refugees have surged into overcrowded camps and hospitals in the town after escaping the Tigers, who had held them as human shields for months.

Aid workers say the impact of the conflict on children has been devastating. Hundreds have been killed in crossfire and thousands more traumatised by horrific scenes and the loss of their families.

“We had one case of a four-year-old girl looking after her nine-month-old brother alone as her mother is in another hospital and her father in yet another,” said Hugues Robert, head of a mission for Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF), the aid agency. “Many children end up alone. They are forgotten about and they don’t eat for days.”

Vavuniya hospital, with a capacity of 450, was swamped last week as 1,700 patients crowded wards and corridors, desperately seeking treatment.

Paul McMaster, a British surgeon working for MSF, said staff working with limited supplies had seen an increase in patients suffering from blast and gunshot wounds.

“We’re doing amputations on children . . . and sometimes we’re operating on the mother and father and a child from the same family that had been wounded by the same explosion or mine,” he said.

“We had a young woman of about 19 who is breast-feeding that I had to do a leg amputation on. I just wonder what the future for her life and child will be.

“These are deeply, deeply traumatised people. We have children sitting in the middle of emergency wards seeing people brought in with major blast and limb injuries, just sitting silently, emotionless.”

The exodus began on Monday when the Sri Lankan army breached a mud defence wall built by the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) to defend their last stronghold, a five-square-mile strip of land just north of Mullaittivu.

The breach created an escape route for tens of thousands of civilians who had been trapped under heavy shelling.

An estimated 50,000 civilians were believed to be still cornered yesterday in the tiny patch of jungle where Vellupilai Prabhakaran, the Tigers’ leader, was boxed in with up to 900 rebels.

The government insisted that the rebels, who once controlled more than one-third of the island, were all but finished, heralding an end to three decades of ethnic conflict.

Sarath Fonseka, the army chief, claimed he knew the “general area” where Prabhakaran was hiding. “We are set to destroy him,” Fonseka said, admitting his forces were facing stiff resistance that could end in hand-to-hand combat.

Last week a naval blockade was put on high alert amid speculation that Prabhakaran - feted by his followers as the “Sun God” - his son Charles Anthony and senior LTTE figures were planning an audacious escape by submarine.

The plan was leaked by the rebels’ former media co-ordina-tor, who surrendered along with the LTTE political wing interpreter. The remaining leadership, known to wear cyanide vials around their necks, have vowed not to surrender.

Prabhakaran is one of the most effective and feared modern guerrilla leaders, but his renowned luck at outsmarting successive government offensives may have run out.

As it emerged that close to 6,500 civilians have died so far this year, survivors told of their perilous flight to government-controlled areas after being forced to live for months in shallow water-logged ditches in the battleground.

People opted to flee across the Puthumathalan lagoon when the army forced back the rebels. Parents tied children to their wrists with string in the neck-deep water but several did not make it alive.

Rajeshwarai, 40, said she had run with her five-year-old son towards the military-controlled area, knowing they might die in the attempt. They had been trapped under constant shelling for two months, with little to eat.

“I ran with my child, hoping even if I died my son will survive and be freed,” she said.

Kamalakaran, 70, said people had been “craving safety for months” after being forced to move with the LTTE since the middle of 2008.

“The trauma in the first few months was bearable as we were repeatedly told by the Tigers that they would protect us at all costs,” she said. “But in recent months we saw a transformation - every family was forced to send a youngster to fight for the Tigers.”

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