HOW MANY INOCENT CIVILIANS SACRIFICE THEIR LIVES FOR WAR?

The world will probably never find out how many innocent civilians died during the bloody final phase of Sri Lanka's war against Tamil Tigers rebels, the UN humanitarian chief said on Friday. The United Nations believes that anywhere from 80,000 to 100,000 people died in what was one of Asia's longest modern wars, erupting in earnest in 1983 when Tamil Tiger rebels began to fight for a separate state for Sri Lanka's minority Tamils. U.N. under-secretary-general John Holmes, who oversees the United Nations' many humanitarian operations, told Reuters in an interview that it was unclear how many died in the months before Sri Lanka declared victory over the LTTE on May 18. He also disputed a death toll reported in The Times of London that cited a "U.N. source" to support an estimate that at least 20,000 people were killed during the months-long final siege. "That figure has no status as far as we're concerned," Holmes said. "It may be right, it may be wrong, it may be far too high, it may even be too low. But we honestly don't know. We've always said an investigation would be a good idea." He said it was based on an unofficial and unverified U.N. estimate of around 7,000 civilian deaths through the end of April and added on roughly 1,000 more per day after that. Holmes said the initial figure of 7,000 deaths had been deemed far too questionable for official publication. Those were "estimates based on the best evidence that we had, but that wasn't very good evidence because we weren't really present in the (battle zone) in any systematic way," Holmes said. "That's why we didn't publish them."