THE TELEGRAPH: Sri Lanka's Tamil Tiger rebels have declared an end to their fight against government forces after the army claimed victory in the 26-year conflict and said the last of civilians escaped from the war zone.
The Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE), who have been fighting for a separate ethnic homeland on the island, effectively surrendered when they said that their campaign had reached its "bitter end" and they would lay down their weapons after weeks spent trapped inside a tiny enclave on the north-east coast.
They appealed for safe passage for 2,000 fighters and their families still in the enclave, which had been reduced to less than a square kilometre, but the government in Colombo said that its forces would seize back "every inch of land" and were pressing on with their offensive.
As thousands of members of the Sinhalese majority celebrated in the streets of Colombo after President Mahinda Rajapaksa claimed victory, his government claimed that the "last" of as many as 50,000 civilians had been freed from the territory after the army mounted a successful operation at the weekend which pinned down the rebels in a pincer movement and cut off possible escape from a stretch of beach. However thousands of civilians are believed to have died in recent weeks under heavy shelling.
There was also speculation about the fate of the Tiger leader Velupillai Prabhakaran. It was reported on Sunday that his body might have been found - suggesting that he could have taken cyanide - but this was later dismissed.
In a statement released on the pro-LTTE Tamilnet website, the Tigers' head of international relations, Selvarasa Pathmanathan, said the group's leadership was sorry for the thousands of lives lost and that it could not have held out longer.
He appealed for "dignity and respect" for Tamil people and said the movement's decision to lay down its arms had been taken because it could no longer tolerate the growing number of civilian casualties. >>> By Dean Nelson, South Asia Editor | Monday, May 18, 2009
TIMESONLINE (BREAKING NEWS):
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