Click to play videoNew Delhi: India stepped up diplomatic pressure on Friday as the Tamil crisis escalated in Sri Lanka.
India asked National Security Adviser MK Narayanan and Foreign Secretary Shiv Shankar Menon to head to Colombo to urge the Sri Lankan government to immediately stop hostilities in the conflict zone.
The decision was taken at a high-level meeting, chaired by Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and attended by External Affairs Minister Pranab Mukherjee and Defence Minister AK Antony in the Capital on Thursday.
It is being seen as a change of tack by the Congress in the run-up to the elections in Tamil Nadu, where the fate of civilians trapped in the conflict between the Sri Lankan armed forces and the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) has become a major political issue.
India will also be stepping up the relief supply for civilians caught in the war zone.
Meanwhile, Sri Lanka has rejected the United Nation's call for a humanitarian mission in the region. Thousands of innocent civilians are still trapped in the 17-square-km area held by the rebels.
UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon on Thursday expressed his concern over the deteriorating situation in Sri Lanka and repeated his appeal to the Tamil rebels to lay down arms to end the nation's 25-year civil war.
"I am most concerned at the rapid deteriorating situation in Sri Lanka. I would like to take this opportunity to strongly urge all the parties concerned to respect the call of the Security Council I made yesterday, without further delay," Ban told reporters in Brussels following an international donor's conference for Somalia.
Trapped civilians
More than 1,00,000 civilians pouring out of Sri Lanka's war zone have included people with untreated blast, mine and gunshot wounds — prompting the UN chief to order an expert team to assess the "rapidly deteriorating situation."
The government says 104,862 civilians have escaped the conflict since Monday.
Some 170,000 to 180,000 civilians now live in government camps, said Gordon Weiss, the UN Spokesman in Colombo.
An additional 15,000 to 20,000 civilians remain trapped in the coastal strip that is still controlled by the LTTE.
No food has reportedly been delivered to the war zone since April 1.
Sri Lankan Foreign Minister Rohitha Bogollagama said the government was working to grant more access to those who had left the war zone, but that will depend on the security situation.
The Red Cross evacuated 350 wounded to a hospital outside the war zone on Wednesday, and another evacuation is being planned.
Both the government and the rebels deny targeting civilians, but the UN estimates more than 4,500 have been killed in the past three months. The Red Cross has said it has evacuated 6,000 civilians with war injuries since January.
This week's exodus began when the military entered a previously declared "no fire" zone along the northeastern coast, breaking through a key rebel bunker on Monday and releasing a flow of fleeing people.
The government has ignored calls to stop the fighting so more civilians could leave, saying it is on the verge of crushing the insurgency.
(With agency inputs)
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