38, 000 houses completely destroyed in Jaffna

[TamilNet, Friday, 11 July 2003, 03:02 GMT]
The Jaffna Humanitarian Agencies Consortium said Thursday that about one hundred and sixty five thousand houses have been damaged or completely destroyed due to the war in the Jaffna peninsula, sources said.

The JHAC Chairman, Mr. S.Paramanathan, said that the data collected up to April this year revealed about 175,000 families have been resettled in the Jaffna district. However, 100,000 houses belonging to them had been damaged. Of these houses, about 38,000 houses have been completely destroyed, he said

When the Memorandum of Understanding was signed last year by the government of Sri Lanka and the LTTE, the Sri Lanka Army had occupied about 922 civilian houses outside the high security zones. Now that more than sixteen months have passed since the ceasefire agreement came into force, the SLA still occupies more than 650 civilian houses outside the high security zones, Mr.Paramanathan said

On the other hand, the SLA has opened new bases in Eluthumadduval, Nunavil and Mirusuvil areas, he said.