THE FATE OF TIGER LEADER PRABHAKARAN MILITARY DECLARES VICTORYON LTTE SRILANKANS WANT PRABHAKARAN LIVE OR DEAD
Sri Lankan troops seized the entire coastline of the Indian Ocean island for the first time since civil war with the Tamil Tiger separatists erupted in 1983, signalling a rapidly approaching conventional victory.
MILITARY DECLARES VICTORY:
No outcome could be more certain. The only question is when. There are more than 50,000 soldiers surrounding fewer than 1,000 hardcore Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) fighters in a coastal speck measuring barely a square km (.5 sq miles), roughly a third of the area of New York's Central Park. Though the LTTE is exceptionally well-armed, they are no match for a military strengthened and custom-built to destroy them.
No outcome could be more certain. The only question is when. There are more than 50,000 soldiers surrounding fewer than 1,000 hardcore Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) fighters in a coastal speck measuring barely a square km (.5 sq miles), roughly a third of the area of New York's Central Park. Though the LTTE is exceptionally well-armed, they are no match for a military strengthened and custom-built to destroy them.Sri Lanka's Tamil Tigers admitted defeat Sunday as the militant group's chief of international relations announced that the "battle has reached its bitter end."
The Tigers and the military say LTTE founder-leader Vellupillai Prabhakaran is in the war zone.
But no one has given definitive proof, and Prabhakaran has proved elusive over his three-decade militant career. Vehicles discovered by troops -- a mini-submarine, a long metal chamber thought to be an underwater escape tunnel and aircraft parts -- seem to suggest that Prabhakaran was planning an escape worthy of characters in the action films biographers say he enjoys. Most analysts agree that Prabhakaran, alive or dead, will keep his fate a mystery. The government's best hope is to get his body, dead or alive. Since he is reported to have ordered bodyguards to burn his body if he is near capture, that seems unlikely.
But no one has given definitive proof, and Prabhakaran has proved elusive over his three-decade militant career. Vehicles discovered by troops -- a mini-submarine, a long metal chamber thought to be an underwater escape tunnel and aircraft parts -- seem to suggest that Prabhakaran was planning an escape worthy of characters in the action films biographers say he enjoys. Most analysts agree that Prabhakaran, alive or dead, will keep his fate a mystery. The government's best hope is to get his body, dead or alive. Since he is reported to have ordered bodyguards to burn his body if he is near capture, that seems unlikely.