With the end of the fighting in Mullaitivu district, a new influx
of internally displaced people (IDPs) is flooding into Vavuniya,
the district adjoining Sri Lanka's northern conflict zone.

Since Friday some 40,000 IDPs have arrived in Vavuniya and
another 40,000 are expected in the course of this week, according
to IOM Vavuniya Head of office Michele Cecere.

"IOM is working flat out with the government and our partners in
the international community to provide these people with the basic
essentials that they need to survive – shelter, water,
sanitation and basic health care," he says.

At the Omanthai checkpoint north of Vavuniya town, where IDPs
are screened by government forces, IOM staff distributed 20,000
bottles of drinking water at the weekend and deployed fourteen
1,000-litre water tanks. It is also supporting a field kitchen at
the site with World Food Programme (WFP) and local NGO
Sewalanka.

IOM has also deployed an ambulance to Omanthai, in response to a
request from the government and Médecins Sans
Frontières (MSF), to evacuate seriously injured people to
Vavuniya Hospital. During the weekend the ambulance moved 71
patients triaged by MSF.

IOM engineers are also racing to prepare emergency shelters,
water and sanitation to cope with the influx. Since last week, IOM
has erected 1,450 tents and built some 80 emergency toilets on the
newly cleared jungle site known as Menik Farm Zone 4. Fifty more
toilets are under construction.

The tents are the first of a consignment of 4,000 shipped by IOM
to Sri Lanka from China. The remainder are now in a warehouse in
Vavuniya and will be erected in the coming days and weeks.

A consignment of 560 tents, 30,000 jerry cans, 4,000 plastic
sheets, 10,000 sleeping mats, and 1,000 mosquito nets donated by
Japan will also be dispatched to Vavuniya shortly, following a
handover ceremony in Colombo on Monday.

The new IDP arrivals are expected to bring the population of the
Menik Farm and other displacement camps in Vavuniya to over
250,000.

International donors funding IOM relief operations in northern
Sri Lanka include the USA, the UK, Japan, the Netherlands,
Australia, the UN Central Emergency Response Fund and the European
Commission Humanitarian Aid Office (ECHO).

For more information please contact:

Aurela Rincon

IOM Sri Lanka

Tel. +94 11 5325 392 (Ext. 379)

E-mail: "mailto:arincon@iom.int">arincon@iom.int

Passanna Gunasekera

Tel. +94 11 5325 300 (Ext. 341)

E-mail: "mailto:pgunasekera@iom.int">pgunasekera@iom.int 

or

Chris Lom

Tel. +66 819275215 (mobile)

E-mail: "mailto:clom@iom.int">clom@iom.int