Indian External Affairs Minister Pranab Mukherjee will arrive in Sri Lanka Tuesday evening for a two-day visit amid amounting international concern over the plight of civilians trapped in Sri Lanka's northern battle zones, official and diplomatic sources said.

The Sri Lankan Department of Government Information said in a statement that Mukherjee will meet Sri Lankan President Mahinda Rajapaksa and his Sri Lankan counterpart Rohitha Bogollagama during his visit.

They will "discuss the latest situation in the northern part of the island nation", said the statement.

His visit comes closely on the heels of a visit by his top bureaucrat Shiv Shankar Menon to Colombo last week.

Mukherjee's visit is being seen as an appeasement of the Tamil lobby in the state of Tamil Nadu in south India.

Home to more than 60 million Tamils, Tamil Nadu has close connections with Sri Lanka's Tamil minority.

Local officials in Tamil Nadu have threaten to resign unless the Indian central government intervenes in the plight of Tamil civilians caught in fighting in Sri Lanka's north.

The Sri Lankan government said its war against the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) is coming to an end as 95 percent of the territories formerly held by the rebels have been captured by the advancing Army.

Aid agencies said more than 200,000 civilians were trapped in the northern battle zone and they call on the two warring parties to ensure the safety of the civilians.

Claiming discrimination at the hands of majority Sinhalese-dominated governments, the LTTE has been fighting for more than two decades to set up an independent Tamil homeland in the north and east.

More than 70,000 people have been killed so far in one of Asia's longest civil wars.

Source: Xinhua