Over 20,000 died in Sri Lanka rebels' defeat: report

Still not the final death toll of civilians , That may never come out ,  unfortunately , I believe this is way more than the amount of the sri lanka military , and tha Tamil Tigers put together !

LONDON (Reuters) - More than 20,000 Tamil civilians were killed in
the final days of Sri Lanka's military operation to defeat Tamil Tigers
rebels, The Times newspaper reported on Friday.

Sri
Lanka's authorities say their forces stopped using heavy weapons on
April 27 in a no-fire zone where an estimated 100,000 Tamil civilians
were sheltered and blame civilian casualties on rebels hiding among the
civilians, the paper said.

Citing
confidential U.N. documents it acquired, The Times said the civilian
death toll in the no-fire zone soared from late April, with around
1,000 civilians killed daily until May 19. That was the day after
Vellupillai Prabhakaran, leader of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam
(LTTE), was killed.

The final civilian death toll could be more than 20,000, said the paper.