JAFFNA, Sri Lanka—Sri Lanka’s ethnic Tamil leaders on Sunday asked the top U.N. human rights official to help determine the fate of more than 4,000 civilians reported missing in the country’s long civil war amid the government’s assertion that most of them are probably dead.
The U.N. official, Zeid Raad al-Hussein, met with the chief minister of Sri Lanka’s Northern Province, the center of the civil war, which ended in 2009. Zeid is on a four-day visit to Sri Lanka to review measures taken by the government to investigate alleged war abuses during the war.
Both the Sri Lankan government and the defeated Tamil Tiger rebels are accused of serious human rights violations. According to U.N. estimates, up to 100,000 people were killed in the 26-year war, but many more are feared to have died, including up to 40,000 civilians in the final months of the fighting.
The U.N. Human Rights Council last year adopted a consensus resolution in which Sri Lanka agreed to an investigation with foreign participation.
