Sri Lankan troops won the final battle in one of the world’s most intractable separatist wars, and put the entire nation under government control for the first time since 1983, the military said yesterday.
In the climactic final gun battle, special forces troops killed Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) leader Vellupillai Prabhakaran as he tried to flee the war zone in an ambulance early yesterday, state television reported.
LTTE intelligence chief Pottu Amman and Soosai, head of the “Sea Tiger” naval wing, were also believed killed, the report said.
Prabhakaran founded the LTTE on a culture of suicide before surrender and had sworn he would never be taken alive.
Army commander Lieutenant General Sarath Fonseka said troops yesterday morning finished the task Sri Lankan President Mahinda Rajapaksa gave them three years ago.
“We have liberated the entire country by completely liberating the north from the terrorists. We have gained full control of LTTE-held areas,” Fonseka said on state TV.
Rajapaksa was scheduled to make his formal declaration of victory before parliament today. He had declared victory on Saturday, even as the final battle in Asia’s longest modern war was intensifying.
It played out on a sandy patch of just 300m² near the northeastern coast, where the military said the last Tiger fighters had holed up in bunkers and surrounded themselves with land mines and booby traps.
The official Media Center for National Security said more than 250 Tigers had been killed in the final battle, which intensified after the military said it had freed the last of 72,000 civilians trapped in the tiny war zone.
News of the Tiger chief’s death came as state TV for the first time broadcast images of the body of his son and heir apparent, Charles Anthony, and other dead rebels.
He was killed overnight, the military said, along with a host of other top LTTE fighters and political cadres, including political chief B. Nadesan and spokesman Seevaratnam Puleedevan.
But Sri Lanka’s triumph was not without controversy. The EU was expected to call yesterday for an independent inquiry into alleged violations of humanitarian and human rights laws and for those responsible to be brought to justice.
A draft EU text due to be put to a foreign ministers meeting in Brussels calls for an end to restrictions on aid agencies and full access to people displaced by the fighting.
In Colombo, demonstrators threw rocks at the British High Commission, tossed a burning effigy of British Foreign Secretary David Miliband inside and spray-painted its wall with epithets and a message: “LTTE headquarters.”
Miliband has been critical of the Sri Lankan government’s prosecution of the war, and is seen in Colombo as sympathetic to the vocal pro-LTTE lobby that has protested outside parliament for weeks in Britain. London has said it backs a war crimes’ probe.
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