Tigers give in after last-ditch suicide attacks

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COLOMBO: – The Tamil Tigers conceded defeat in Sri Lanka’s 25-year civil war yesterday, after launching waves of suicide attacks to repel a final assault by troops determined to annihilate them.

President Mahinda Rajapakse had declared victory over the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) the day before, even as combat raged in the island’s north-east and the military said it was freeing the last of thousands of trapped civilians.

By midday yesterday, the military said troops had freed all the civilians being held by the LTTE inside an area that was less than 1 sq km. A total of 72,000 had fled since Thursday, it said.

The fate of the LTTE’s founder-leader Velupillai Prabhakaran remained a mystery, although military sources said a body believed to be his was recovered and its identity was being confirmed.

The LTTE, founded on a culture of suicide before surrender, had shown no sign of giving up. Suicide fighters blew themselves up on the front line yesterday morning, and more than 70 were killed trying to flee overnight, the military said.

But by afternoon, the military said fighting had slowed, and the pro-rebel website www.TamilNet.com released a statement from the LTTE’s head of international relations saying: ‘This battle has reached its bitter end.

‘We have decided to silence our guns. Our only regrets are for the lives lost and that we could not hold out for longer.’

But the military refused to let up in their offensive, saying troops were pushing on to recapture ‘every inch of land’ held by the rebels.

Government forces on Saturday took control of the entire island’s coast for the first time since war broke out in 1983, cutting off any chance of escape for a militant group whose conventional defeat has been a foregone conclusion for months.

The military has in less than three years captured 15,000 sq km the Tigers had controlled as a quasi-state for Sri Lanka’s minority Tamils.

The group’s leader Prabhakaran, who built the LTTE into one of the world’s most violent insurgent groups through hundreds of suicide bombings and assassinations, had vowed never to be taken alive.

Military sources told Reuters a body believed to be his was found.

‘They are taking the body for checks to confirm it is the real Prabhakaran,’ one military official told Reuters on conditions of anonymity. But Brigadier Udaya Nanayakkara, the military spokesman, denied that.

The cataclysmic end to the war came after the government rejected calls for a new truce to protect civilians, and the Tigers refused to surrender and free the 50,000-100,000 people that the United Nations and others said they were holding as human shields.

Each side accuses the other of killing civilians, and diplomats say there is evidence that both have done so.

Sri Lanka said yesterday that there was no ‘bloodbath’ during its ‘rescue’ of the civilians.

‘Everybody has come out safely and they are being looked after by the government,’ Human Rights Minister Mahinda Samarasinghe told reporters.

There was considerable doubt as to whether the defeat would bring peace to the island, however, as the Tigers were thought likely to return to the guerrilla tactics they used to devastating effect in the past.

Nevertheless, thousands of Sri Lankans poured into the streets yesterday morning, dancing and setting off celebratory fireworks, after Mr Rajapakse made an initial declaration of victory. ‘We are celebrating a victory against terrorism,’ said 32-year-old Sujeewa Anthonis, a street hawker.

President Rajapakse scheduled a nationally televised news conference for Tuesday morning at Parliament, where he was expected to tell the nation that the war was over.

REUTERS, ASSOCIATED PRESS, AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE