Sri Lanka declared total victory yesterday in one of the world’s most intractable wars, after killing the separatist Tamil Tigers’ leader and taking control of the entire country for the first time since 1983.
In a climactic gunbattle, 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.
Prabhakaran (54) founded the LTTE on a culture of suicide before surrender, and had sworn he would never be taken alive.
Army commander Lieut Gen Arath Fonseka said troops had crushed the last Tigers resisting an offensive that has, in less than three years, destroyed a group that had cultivated an aura of military invincibility while earning many terrorism designations.
“We have liberated the entire country by completely liberating the north from the terrorists. We have gained full control of LTTE-held areas,” Lieut Gen Fonseka announced on state TV.
President Mahinda Rajapaksa had already declared victory on Saturday, even as the final battle in Asia’s longest modern war was intensifying after the last of 72,000 civilians held in the war zone had been freed.
The LTTE conceded defeat on Sunday. But it has long warned it would intensify guerrilla attacks on economically valuable targets if defeated on the battlefield, something which has hindered growth in Sri Lanka’s tourism sector. The end of combat and Prabhakaran’s death boosted the currency and stock markets.
The final act played out on a sandy patch of just 300sq metres near the Indian Ocean island’s northeastern coast, where the military said the last Tiger fighters had holed up in bunkers guarded by land mines and booby traps.
More than 250 Tigers’ corpses were recovered, and Lieut Ge Fonseka said checks were under way to see if Prabhakaran’s was among them. Already, the body of his son and heir-apparent, Charles Anthony, and two top lieutenants, intelligence chief Pottu Amman and naval wing leader Soosai, had been identified. State TV showed several bodies, including that of Charles Anthony.
The LTTE had no immediate comment. Independent confirmation of battlefield accounts are all but impossible, since the war zone has been sealed off to most outsiders. Officially, the military has not confirmed Prabhakaran’s death. Mr Rajapaksa is expected to do so today in a speech to be broadcast nationally from parliament.
India, which originally armed the LTTE but later fought it during a disastrous 1987-1990 peacekeeping mission, urged Rajapaksa to devolve political power to ethnic Tamils.
“It is our view that, as the conventional conflict in Sri Lanka comes to an end, this is the moment when the root causes of conflict in Sri Lanka can be addressed,” a foreign ministry statement said.
Mr Rajapaksa has pledged to call elections in the former LTTE areas soon. The two sides had refused to negotiate an end to the war, despite western calls to protect an estimated 50,000-100,000 people held by the LTTE as human shields.
