Millions of pounds of British aid are being channelled by the Sri Lankan Government into controversial internment camps where it plans to hold and screen up to 200,000 civilians fleeing the conflict with the Tamil Tigers.

Britain has donated 5,000 tents – worth £500,000 – and more emergency aid worth millions of pounds could follow soon, according to Mike Foster, Minister for International Development, who visited Sri Lanka yesterday.

Mr Foster visited two camps and met Sri Lankan officials to urge them to call a ceasefire and allow aid agencies to help tens of thousands of civilians still stuck on the front line or on their way to the camps.

The officials told him that aid agencies could help the civilians once they were inside the barbed wire enclosures – which some Tamil activists and Indian and Sri Lankan Tamil MPs have likened to concentration camps.

“It’s not an ideal situation but it’s important that we do this to help people who’ve been living in awful circumstances,” Mr Foster told The Times. He said that the British tents, able to shelter 20,000 to 30,000 people, had been given to the United Nations refugee agency to distribute in the camps, which are already holding an estimated 113,000 refugees.

He added that officials had promised to screen and resettle 80 per cent of the civilians by the end of the year, rather than within three years, as they originally proposed in February.

“We made the case for a humanitarian ceasefire,” he said. “It was noted.” He added that David Miliband, the Foreign Secretary, would continue to press the Sri Lankan authorities when he arrives in Colombo tomorrow with his French and Swedish counterparts.

The Sri Lanka Army says that it has pinned down the last of the Tigers in a “no-fire zone” – now just 3.8sq miles of beach and coconut grove on the northeastern coast – and is finally poised to defeat them after 26 years of civil war.

It says that it has rescued 180,000 civilians from the area and believes that there are 15,000-20,000 left inside.

The UN says that there are 50,000 inside, and tens of thousands making their way to the camps, which are already severely overcrowded.

Mr Foster said that he had visited two transit camps where 6,400 civilians were being held before being moved into internment camps, where they are to be screened to make sure they are not Tigers.

He said that basic needs were being met in the camps he visited, in Vavuniya district and that he had been allowed to talk freely with the internees through his own Tamil interpreter.

He was not taken to the three main camps in Vavuniya – called Zone 1, Zone 2 and Zone 3 – where an estimated 80,000 civilians are being held, according to aid workers there.

Conditions in those facilities are far worse, with drinking water in short supply, according to Lisabeth List, the medical co-ordinator for Médecins Sans Frontières, the medical aid agency. “They’re desperate for water – it’s extremely hot so more and more people are severely dehydrated,” she said.

“Because there are so many elderly and children, at any moment somebody could die because of this lack of water.” She also said that there was insufficient food in Zone 2 and Zone 3.

“People are getting so desperate they’re having to throw food off the back of a truck and people are getting trampled,” she said. “We’re in full blown emergency mode now. We still expect a lot more people to come.”

John Holmes, the UN humanitarian chief, also visited camps in Vavuniya and met President Rajapaksa as he wrapped up a three-day visit to Sri Lanka.

Mr Holmes pledged $10 million in aid, but the President turned down his appeals for a ceasefire and access to civilians outside the camps. “I am disappointed about this,” Mr Holmes said.

Ban Ki Moon, the UN Secretary-General, had made a personal appeal for a humanitarian team to enter the no-fire zone but the Government has said repeatedly that it would be too dangerous and might allow the Tigers to regroup and rearm.

Mr Rajapaksa ordered the army not to use heavy artillery or aerial weapons yesterday, saying that troops should use only light weapons, and focus on rescuing civilians.

He stopped short of calling a ceasefire, and it was not clear whether his order would have any effect as the army has said for weeks that it is only using light weapons.

Mr Holmes welcomed the order, but added: “I hope it will be genuinely respected this time. It has not happened in the past.”

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