Sri Lankan troops yesterday captured the last patch of coastline held by the Tamil Tigers, leaving the rebels completely surrounded and cut off from any sea escape, the military said.
The Sri Lankan government has vowed to press on to secure the final defeat of the Tigers despite international calls for a ceasefire to save the lives of thousands of trapped civilians.
In a new appeal to Sri Lankan authorities, EU foreign ministers said “the fighting must stop now.”
PHOTO: AFP
Two divisions of government soldiers that have been advancing along the coastline from the southern and northern ends of the rebel territory linked up yesterday morning, a military official said.
“The Tigers still have a few square kilometers of land, but not the use of the beach front,” he said.
President Mahinda Rajapakse has vowed to take the last territory from the Tigers by today, ending the separatists’ decades-long armed campaign for an ethnic Tamil homeland.
The Tigers controlled nearly one third of the island only two years ago, operating an effectively autonomous Tamil state.
Their defeat is unlikely to bring peace to Sri Lanka, instead seeing Tamil fighters return to the guerrilla hit-and-run tactics that they have used to devastating effect in the past.
Thousands of civilians continued to pour out of the rebel zone where they had been held by the Tigers in dire conditions.
“They are slowly giving up. They are blowing up whatever arms and ammunition they have,” military spokesman Brigadier Udaya Nanayakkara said of the remnants of the once-powerful Tamil Tiger army.
Tamil Tiger founder and leader Velupillai Prabhakaran is thought to be with his troops as they make a last stand.
UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon’s chief of staff, Vijay Nambiar, was heading to Sri Lanka in a fresh effort to stop the carnage and was expected to reach Colombo late yesterday.
The UN’s human rights office has said an independent probe into war crimes in Sri Lanka was vital.
The International Committee of the Red Cross said staff were “witnessing an unimaginable humanitarian catastrophe.”
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