COLOMBO A group of Sri Lankan doctors who have been in police custody for nearly two months were brought before the media to recant their reports of mass civilian casualties during the final days of the civil war.

COLOMBO

A group of Sri Lankan doctors who have been in police custody for nearly two months were brought before the media to recant their reports of mass civilian casualties during the final days of the civil war.

The men, who looked well-fed but nervous, denied they were withdrawing their statements under pressure from the government, even as they expressed hopes they might now be released. A rights group said there were "significant grounds to question whether these statements were voluntary".

Their new testimony on Wednesday - with drastically reduced death tolls and casualty figures during shelling of civilian areas - contradicted reports from independent aid workers with the United Nations and the Red Cross who witnessed some of the violence.

The government barred journalists from the war zone and threw out most aid workers, leaving the doctors as one of the few sources of information about the toll the fighting was taking on the hundreds of thousands of civilians trapped by the final battles of the 25-year civil war here.

UN figures show more than 7000 civilians were killed between January and May.

On Wednesday, one of the five doctors brought before media, Dr V Shanmugarajah, said: "The information that I have given is false The figures were exaggerated due to pressure from the LTTE (the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam)."

The UN said it stood behind its casualty statements.-AP