the Safe Zone. Satellite images of the Safe Zone publishes by the UN, foreign governments and scientific organisations showed heavy damage that could have only been caused by bombardment. There is credible evidence that the LTTE itself wanted to deliberately create a humanitarian disaster. Inevitably many thousands of civilians were killed or injured. A United Nations panel in 2011 found that as many as 40,000 Tamil civilians may have been killed in the final months of the civil war. The UN, based on credible witness evidence from aid agencies as well civilians evacuated from the Safe Zone by sea, estimated that 6,500 civilians were killed and another 14,000 injured between mid-January, when the Safe Zone was first declared, and mid-April. There are no official casualty figures after this period but a report in The Times claims that civilian deaths increased to an average of 1,000 per day after mid-April 2009. The UN at the time had refused to confirm the Times' allegations. Older estimates of the death toll dating from May 2009 for the final four months of the civil war (mid-January to mid-May) range from 15,000 to 20,000. A US State Department report has suggested that the actual casualty figures were probably much higher than these older UN's estimates and that significant numbers of casualties were not recorded. However, a study by the Sinhalese run Marga Institute of Sri Lanka arrives at a much lower figure, below 10,000. Lord Naseby using information obtained using the right to information, British diplomatic cables etc., also claimed that about 7000 deaths could have occurred. However, human rights groups accuse Lord Naseby of purposely distorting a snapshot of figures gathered by the UN in 2009, which contradict the later and more thorough investigation undertaken by the United Nations panel in 2011 which found that as many as 40,000 Tamil civilians may have been killed in the final months of the civil war. In 2014, the Daily Telegraph's chief political commentator Peter Oborne described Lord Naseby as an apologist for the Sri Lankan government, who had given misleading and inaccurate statements about the war. As the civil war began to wind down in late April/early May the number of civilians leaving the Safe Zone increased substantially. On 19 May the Sri Lankan government declared victory. After the end of the war a number of countries and human rights organisations called for an independent investigation