Having read quite a bit of the report and seen the recent documentary aird on Channel 4 here in the UK, it certainly seems that their was a direct effort to target civilians. Particularly in instance where the ICRC had given GPS coordinates to the SLA of the locations of hospitals treating civilians and injured LTTE cadres alike, which had no military use. The constant moving of the no fire zones seems deliberate in order to force as many people as possible into as small a space as possible. The LTTE do not exactly come out clean either, use of suicide bombers in processing centres and the use of civilians to construct defences etc. However the LTTE are a perscribed terrorist organisation and are hardly expected to act like saints.

The two issues that face the Sri Lanakn government are the conduct of it's armed forces which amount to war crimes and it's policy which amount to crimes against humanity. The cases of summary executions and rape from the SLA are clearly war crimes and their needs to be an investigate. The policy of the government in it's managing of the humanitarian crisis and the way it commanded it's armed forces, after all the chain of command goes right to the PM. No one likes to throw the word genocide about and I'm not saying it applies here, however the there does seem a concerted effort to cleanse as many LTTE cadres as possible and control the Tamil population caught up in the conflict.

I've heard first hand accounts of how the government controled the movements of international NGO workers after the conflict. It was too big a mess to sweep under the carpet.