They were addressing a government-appointed war commission on one of its visits to the former war zone.

Many hesitate to speak out against the government or military in northern Sri Lanka but Catholic priests regularly do so.

The Bishop of Mannar, the Right Reverend Rayappu Joseph, and his two senior colleagues were no exception as they addressed the war panel.

Long lists of victims

They said they had long lists of victims of enforced disappearance and of those killed in the last phase of the war.

They estimated there were nearly 150,000 people still unaccounted for during the last phase of fighting - a figure higher than most other calculations.

Thousands in prisons

The bishop and priests also criticised the authorities for keeping what they said were thousands of people in prison on suspicion of links to the Tamil Tigers but without trying them and with their relatives only allowed to visit in very constricted circumstances.

And the churchmen pleaded that the military should reduce its presence in the north, alleging that soldiers had been banning religious services arranged to pray for war victims and accusing the army of inviting itself to all public events.

Last week a government minister declared that the number of civilians killed in the war's last three years was about eleven hundred and not in the multiple thousands.

The war panel has so far had five months of hearings in its declared quest to get to the root causes of the Sri Lankan war and prevent another one.