LTTE chief Prabhakaran killed LTTE chief Prabhakaran reportedly shot dead Tiger leader Prabhakaran killed
Sri Lanka's state television station announced on Monday that Tamil Tiger rebel chief Velupillai Prabhakaran has been killed, and the army commander said the last pockets of rebel resistance have been cleared from the north.
LTTE chief Prabhakaran was shot dead while trying to flee government troops, a senior defence official said today.
However that account of events was disputed by a military spokesman who said that there had been no identification of Prabhakaran as yet. The Sri Lankan army killed a number of other senior Tamil Tiger commanders as fighting continued to rage despite the Tigers' weekend admission of defeat.
Prabhakaran's death would spell the end of a more than three-decade quest by the rebel leader for a separate state for minority Tamils across northern and eastern Sri Lanka. Rupavahini television, the state broadcaster, broke into its regular programming Monday afternoon to announce Prabakharan'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. 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. Prabhakaran was in a small convoy of a van and ambulance along with several close aides which tried to drive out of the battle zone, but was attacked and killed, the senior defence ministry official said. "He was killed with two others inside the vehicle. There will be a formal announcement later," the official said on condition he not be named. "When the troops opened fire, the van tried to get away, but it was also hit," said another high-level source from the military.
"The vehicle caught fire."
The defence ministry said the rebels' leadership was decimated, heralding an end to their decades-old battle to carve out an independent ethnic homeland in the north of the island. Troops also found the bodies of Prabhakaran's 24-year-old son Charles Anthony, the group's political wing leader B. Nadesan, and the head of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) Peace Secretariat, S Pulideevan. Also reportedly found dead were the LTTE's police chief Ilango, its eastern leader, S Ramesh, and deputy intelligence chief Kapil Amman.
In a dramatic announcement, the guerrillas acknowledged Sunday that their decades-old battle for an independent ethnic homeland had reached its "bitter end" -- signalling Asia's longest running civil war was all but over. He added: "We have decided to silence our guns …Our only regrets are for the lives lost and that we could not hold out for longer."
Independent verification of the situation is all but impossible as journalists are not being allowed near the conflict zone. The International Committee of the Red Cross, the only neutral organisation allowed access, told The Times that it had lost contact with its 25 staff members on the battlefield yesterday morning.
At his height Prabhakaran built the Tigers into arguably the most effective terrorist organisation in the world. He pioneered the use of suicide bombers, plotted the assasination of Rajiv Gandhi, the Indian Prime Minister, and at one time commanded about a third of Sri Lanka as he strove to build a separate Tamil state in the north of the country.
His campaign for an ethnic Tamil homeland, which he said would free the ethnic minority from the oppression of Sri Lanka’s Sinhalese Buddhist majority, cost more than 70,000 lives over 26 years.
The continuation of fighting today cast doubt on a dramatic statement made by the Tigers’ chief of international relations yesterday, which appeared to indicate that the rebels were surrendering.
Pro-Government newspapers in Sri Lanka today likened the defeat of the Tigers to the feat of landing a man on the moon. Mahinda Rajapaksa, the country’s president, is expected to give a proclamation of victory in Parliament today or tomorrow.
But many are asking at what cost the Tigers, who are designated as a terrorist organisation by more than 30 countries, including the UK, have been vanquished.
Meanwhile, attitudes among ordinary Sri Lankans to the conflict’s bloody climax are divided.
Among some Sinhalese in Colombo, the capital, where government workers had spent yesterday morning decking the streets in bunting and national flags, the mood was jubilant.
“It is a great day for our President,” said W. S. C. Bandula, 40, a driver. “The war is over. We can look forward to better lives, better security, a better economy.”
Others were less sure.
There are now calls for a political solution to the conflict amid fears that Tiger sleeper cells may be preparing a wave of suicide attacks in the south of the country. Mano Ganesan, a prominent Tamil MP and human rights activist, told The Times: “The war is won but the political conditions [underpinning] Tamil militancy remain undefeated."