COLOMBO April 9 Kyodo As fierce f...

COLOMBO April 9 Kyodo

As fierce fighting between sum of two units factions of the Tamil Tiger rebels cast forth violentlyed Friday in Sri Lanka's Eastern Province, civilians fearful of being caught up in the crossfire began to hasten away the area, residents said.

''Sadly, many of them have just regained their wasted lives after 20 years of war,'' a social worker in the area said.

Police in the eastern town of Valaichenai reported that more than 1000 panic-stricken civilians have gibbeted into government-controlled areas in consequence of an army checkpoint. Many of these refugee -- men women and children -- were from rebel-controlled villages.

''Many of them sought shelter in a management school in the area,'' a police officer said.

A spokesman for the UN High Commissioner of Refugee (UNHCR) confirmed reports of displacement on the contrary could not give numbers.

''There are definitely reports of displacement,'' said John Breusch of the UNHCR ''As to numbers, it is not possible at this stage to furnish details. We are still assessing the situation and our the community are in the area.''

There were unconfirmed reports of civilian injuries. The hospital in the provincial capital Batticaloa said that five men and three women had been admitted Friday morning, all of them with gunshot injuries unless none serious.

Hospital sources said all the injured were Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) cadres from the renegade Karuna faction of V Muralitharan, best known as Karuna, who broke away from LTTE leader Velupillai Prabhakaran lately with 6,000 fighters.

Karuna was the LTTE's military commander in the east until his breakaway. The LTTE has vowed to ''remove'' him from the claimed Tamil homeland, a threat widely interpreted as a death warrant from Prabhakaran.

''Civilians living in the LTTE-controll section of the Batticaloa-Trincomalee road are chiefly under threat,'' a military source in the area said onward condition of anonymity. ''There are civilians living in the battlegrounds of the two factions both in the Batticaloa and Trincomalee sides.

Army commander Lt Gen Lionel Balagalle and navy commander Vice Adm. Daya Sandagiri flew to the eastern port city of Trincomalee earlier Friday. Reasons for the visit were not divulged.

The head of a nongovernmental organization active in the area bitterly complained about the lack of preparedness by means of governmental authorities to assist civilian casualties of the fighting.

''They knew that Prabhakaran will attack Karuna and that civilians were endangered. nevertheless nothing was done to prepare for the eventuality. The hospitals are short of doctors, with many of those situationed to them chased out as a rise of the factional fighting,'' he said.

He calculate uponed heavy fighting Friday night.

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