Stranded Jaffna residents provided transport from Vavuniya
[TamilNet, Monday, 25 September 2006, 08:05 GMT]
Nearly half of the two thousand stranded Jaffna residents in Vavuniya were taken in buses to Trincomalee harbour and from there they will taken in a ship to Jaffna, said Ms. Charles, Additional Government Agent (GA) Vavuniya Sunday evening, briefing the press at the Vavuniya Government Secretariat. Transport arrangements to the remaining will also be made soon, she added.
Government officials, University students, children and the elderly were selected on a priority basis. They were provided meals and drinking water for the bus journey to Trincomalee, said sources. More than two thousand people of the Jaffna peninsula were trapped in Vavuniya when the A9 land route was closed with the eruption of clashes between the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) and the Sri Lanka government (GoSL) on 11 August. The stranded people had organised several demonstrations in the past weeks in front of the Vavuniya Government Secretariat demanding transport to go to Jaffna. Several stranded Jaffna residents, in the meantime, had used perilous sea journey through Mannar seas in fishing boats to reach Jaffna. The Jaffna bound people and their bags were subjected to thorough security search by the police and army, said sources.
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