VANCOUVER: Canadian authorities late Thursday seized control of a cargo ship carrying hundreds of Tamil refugees fleeing Sri Lanka, military officials told Canadian media.

Canada Border Services Agency staff and military forces boarded the ship, carrying some 490 passengers, officials told the daily Globe and Mail.

Officials had earlier prepared hospital beds and jail cells hours ahead of the arrival of the refugees, including women and children, aboard the MV Sun Sea, in an incident that has highlighted concern over the plight of Sri Lanka`s Tamil minority.
Sri Lanka has repeatedly rejected a United Nations probe into alleged rights abuses during the final stages of its long civil war, which ended with government troops defeating the Tamil Tiger rebels in May 2009.

A government-appointed panel probing the final stages of the conflict began work in Colombo on Wednesday, but rights bodies and lawmakers in the United States accused it of lacking credibility.

The UN has said that at least 7,000 ethnic Tamil civilians were killed in the last four months of fighting, while rights groups have accused the government of deliberately shelling civilians.

Local media reported the 188-foot (57-meter) cargo ship was being escorted to Vancouver island by a Canadian naval ship.

Police and naval vessels were active in the waters off Vancouver Island Thursday, local residents told AFP. Local media reported that tents had been erected to receive the migrants at a dock near Esquimalt, a naval base on Vancouver Island.
A vacant emergency ward has been set aside in Victoria General Hospital for "triage, screening and diagnostics," hospital spokeswoman Shannon Marshall told AFP.

Healthy migrants will be released back to federal authorities, said Marshall, "while those who require further care will be admitted to an area of the hospital that will be kept separate from the general population."

Local officials confirmed that two jails near the mainland metropolis of Vancouver had prepared space for the expected arrivals.

"There may be over 200 people on board, including women and children," said a staff memo from the Vancouver Island Health Authority.

Media reports originating in Colombo, Sri Lanka, said the ship headed for Canada after being turned back from Australia, and that several other ships full of refugees are also on their way.

The ship`s approach has renewed a perennial controversy in Canada over immigration and refugee policies that make the country among the most welcoming.

BDST: 1052 HRS, August 13, 2010