Medical team from India

India on Friday dispatched a medical team along with a large consignment of medicine to Sri Lanka as part of its efforts to provide relief to displaced Tamils in the Island nation in the aftermath of the recently concluded civil war.

"We are sending a 27-member medical team comprising eight doctors with over 25 tons of relief material to help the internally displaced civilians in Sri Lanka," Defence Spokesman Brigadier P. Sachdeva told reporters in New Delhi shortly before a military aircraft took off from Delhi to Colombo.

India has already established a 110-bed hospital in Pulmoddai town near the eastern port city of Trincomalee and is going to shift the facility to the Menik Farms area in the northern district of Vavuniya that was liberated from the Tamil Tiger rebels.

Sachdeva said that Sri Lankan Government had requested Indian authorities to shift the hospital to Vavuniya since it was closer to the main concentration of displaced Tamils.

The team includes a surgeon, a physician, an anaesthetist and paramedical staff. Nearly two dozen Indian doctors are already in Sri Lanka.