Sri Lanka says Tamil Tiger leader killed

[David]

AP


COLOMBO, Sri Lanka – Sri Lanka declared Monday it had crushed the final resistance of the Tamil Tigers, killing rebel chief Velupillai Prabhakaran and ending his three decade quest for an independent homeland for minority Tamils.

Rupavahini television, the state broadcaster, broke into its regular programming Monday afternoon to announce Prabhakaran's death. They gave no details of how he was killed. The government information department also sent a text message to cell phones across the country announcing Prabhakaran was killed along with his top deputies, who were known as Soosai and Pottu Amman.

Prabhakaran's death or capture was crucial in bringing closure to this war-wracked Indian Ocean island nation. If had escaped, he could have used his large international smuggling network and the support of Tamil expatriates to spark a new round of guerrilla warfare here. His death in battle could still turn him into a martyr for other Tamil separatists.

Sri Lanka's army chief, Lt. Gen. Sareth Fonseka, told television his troops routed the last rebels from the northern war zone Monday morning and were working to identify Prabhakaran's body from among the dead.

"We can announce very responsibly that we have liberated the whole country from terrorism," he told state television. It was widely presumed Fonseka was waiting for President Mahinda Rajapaksa to announce Prabhakaran's death.

Fonseka and the commanders of the other security forces were to formally inform the president of the victory Monday afternoon, according to the information department.

Senior military officials said Prabhakaran was surrounded early Monday with the last of his fighters.

He and his top deputies drove in an armor-plated van accompanied by a bus filled with armed rebels toward approaching Sri Lankan forces, sparking a two-hour firefight, the officials said, speaking on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak to the media.

Troops eventually fired a rocket at the van, ending the battle, the officials said. Troops then pulled Prabhakaran's body from the van and identified it as that of the rebel leader, they said.

There was no immediate comment from rebel leaders abroad on the announcement of their leader's death.

The chubby, mustachioed Prabhakaran turned what was little more than a street gang in the late 1970s into one of the world's most feared insurgencies. He demanded unwavering loyalty and gave his followers vials of cyanide to wear around their chest and bite into in case of capture.

At the height of his power, he controlled a shadow state in northern Sri Lankan and commanded a force that including an infantry, backed by artillery, a significant naval wing and a nascent air force.

He also controlled a suicide squad known as the Black Tigers that was blamed for scores of deadly attacks. The rebels were branded a terror group and condemned for forcibly conscripting child soldiers.

Earlier, the military announced it had killed several top rebel leaders, including Prabhakaran's son Charles Anthony, also a rebel leader. The military said special forces also found the bodies of the rebels' political wing leader, Balasingham Nadesan, the head of the rebels' peace secretariat, Seevaratnam Puleedevan, and one of the top military leaders, known as Ramesh.

The rebels have been fighting since 1983 for a separate state for Sri Lanka's ethnic Tamil minority after years of marginalization at the hands of the Sinhalese majority. More than 70,000 people have been killed in the fighting.

Government forces ousted the rebels from their shadow state in the north in recent months and brought the group to its knees. Thousands of civilians were reportedly killed in the recent fighting.

Senior diplomats had appealed for a humanitarian cease-fire in recent weeks to safeguard the tens of thousands of civilians trapped in the war zone, but the government refused and many here grew angry at what they saw as unwanted foreign interference.

On Monday, more than a thousand angry Sri Lankans protested outside the British Embassy in Colombo, pelting it with rocks and eggs and burning an effigy of British Foreign Minister David Miliband and throwing it inside the compound. Protesters held posters calling Miliband a "white Tiger," and several tried to climb the embassy's high walls.

On Sunday, thousands gathered in the streets of Colombo to dance, sing and let off fireworks as rebel official Selvarasa Pathmanathan admitted the group's defeat.

"This battle has reached its bitter end," Pathmanathan said in a statement e-mailed to The Associated Press. "It is our people who are dying now from bombs, shells, illness and hunger. We cannot permit any more harm to befall them. 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."