COLOMBO - A GROUP of Sri Lankan doctors, who have been in police custody for nearly two months for allegedly spreading rebel propaganda before the defeat of the Tamil Tigers, have publicly recanted their reports of mass civilian casualties during the final days of the civil war on the island.

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.

Their new testimony at a news conference on Wednesday - with drastically reduced death tolls and casualty figures during shelling of civilian areas - contradicted reports from 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.

UN figures show more than 7,000 civilians were killed between January and May. Human rights groups accused the government of shelling heavily populated areas and accused the rebels of holding civilians as human shields. Satellite photos showed densely populated civilian areas had been shelled. Both sides denied the accusations.

When asked about the doctors' latest comments, UN spokesman Gordon Weiss said: 'We stand by our statements.'

At the time, the doctors gave harrowing accounts of the damage and described how the vast number of wounded civilians overwhelmed their makeshift hospitals.

Their statements infuriated government officials. The doctors fled the area during the final battles in mid-May and were immediately arrested and accused of spreading rebel propaganda.

'The LTTE forced us to give figures (to the media),' Dr Thurairaja Varatharajah said on Wednesday at the government's Media Centre for National Security auditorium. 'Figures were exaggerated due to LTTE pressure.'

Dr Varatharajah, who was the top health official in the war zone, said they were forced to comply because they were in an LTTE-controlled area. -- AFP, AP

Read the full story in Friday's edition of The Straits Times.