By C. Bryson Hull and Ranga Sirilal
COLOMBO (Reuters) - The Tamil Tigers conceded defeat in Sri Lanka's
25-year civil war on Sunday, with some staging suicide attacks to
try to repel a final assault by troops determined to annihilate
them.
President Mahinda Rajapaksa had already declared victory over the
Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) the day before, and the
military said the bulk of the fighting was over by the time the
rebels said they had been beaten.
Even though there was little doubt about the final outcome of
Asia's longest modern war, sporadic battles were still being fought
late on Sunday and no one was willing to predict when the last
bullet would be fired.
"We are doing the mopping-up operations," military spokesman
Brigadier Udaya Nanayakkara said. "Suicide cadres are coming in
front of troops in the frontline and exploding themselves."
Rajapaksa was due to make a formal victory announcement in
parliament on Tuesday morning, but already flags were flying,
people were dancing and lighting off fireworks in celebration.
The last act was playing out in what the military said was less
than 1 square km (0.5 sq mile), where the LTTE carried out suicide
attacks on Sunday before troops freed the last of 72,000 civilians
who have fled over four days.
LTTE founder-leader Vellupillai Prabhakaran's fate 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, at the
last minute issued a statement from its diplomatic chief saying:
"This battle has reached its bitter end."
"We remain with one last choice -- to remove the last weak excuse
of the enemy for killing our people. We have decided to silence our
guns," said Selvarajah Pathmanathan's statement, posted on the
pro-rebel www.TamilNet web site.
Pathmanathan, who is wanted by Interpol and was for years the
LTTE's chief weapons smuggler, said 3,000 people lay dead and
25,000 more were wounded.
Getting an independent picture of events in the war zone is
normally a difficult task, given both sides have repeatedly
distorted accounts to suit their side of the story and outside
observers are generally barred from it.
PRABHAKARAN'S FATE
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 square
kms (5,792 sq miles) the Tigers had controlled as a quasi-state for
Sri Lanka's minority Tamils.
There was still no confirmed word on the fate of Prabhakaran, who
built the LTTE into one of the world's most violent armed groups
through hundreds of suicide bombings and assassinations, which
earned it a terrorist designation in more than 30 nations.
"They are taking the body for checks to confirm it is the real
Prabhakaran," a military official told Reuters on condition of
anonymity. Four other military sources confirmed the account.
Nanayakkara denied Prabhakaran's body had been found, and that
checks on a corpse were being carried out.
The cataclysmic end to the war came after the government rejected
calls for a truce to protect civilians, and the Tigers refused to
surrender and free 50,000-100,000 people 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 both have done so. The U.N. rights chief on
Friday said she backed an inquiry into potential war crimes and
humanitarian violations by both sides.
A wave of diplomatic pressure from the United States, Britain,
France and the United Nations last week, including threats to delay
a $1.9 billion International Monetary Fund (IMF) loan, appeared to
come too late to stop the final fight.
POST-WAR BOOST
Sri Lanka's $40 billion economy is struggling with depleted foreign
exchange reserves, shrinking export revenues for tea and garments,
rising import costs, a declining rupee currency and a balance of
payments crisis.
Rajapaksa's government is counting on victory in the war to help
boost the economy and renew economic growth that for years had been
among the highest in south Asia.
The Tigers have warned that their conventional defeat will usher in
a new phase of guerrilla conflict targeting Sri Lanka's
economically valuable targets, an indirect threat to a tourism
sector the government hopes can be boosted after the war.
Rajapaksa kissed the ground after he returned home early on Sunday
from an official visit to Jordan, state TV showed.
The Tigers have answered earlier battlefield losses with suicide
bombings in the capital, Colombo.
Prabhakaran began his fight for a separate state for Sri Lanka's
minority Tamils in the early 1970s, and it erupted into a
full-scale civil war in 1983 that has killed at least 70,000.
Tamils complain of marginalisation at the hands of successive
governments led by the Sinhalese majority, which came to power at
independence in 1948 and took the favoured position the Tamils had
enjoyed under the British colonial government.
An Indian foreign ministry official said there was no immediate
reaction to the report of the Tigers conceding defeat.
