http://ca.news.yahoo.com/s/reuters/090517/world/international_us_srilanka_war

Sri Lanka's long war reaches climax, Tigers concede
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By C. Bryson Hull and Ranga Sirilal

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COLOMBO (Reuters) - The Tamil Tigers conceded defeat in Sri Lanka's 25-year civil war on Sunday, after launching waves of suicide attacks to repel a final assault by troops determined to annihilate them.


President Mahinda Rajapaksa had declared victory over the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) the day before, even as combat raged in the island's northeast and the military said it was freeing the last of thousands of trapped civilians.


By midday Sunday, the military said troops had freed all the civilians being held by the LTTE inside an area that was less than a single square km (0.5 sq mile). A total of 72,000 had fled since Thursday, it said.


LTTE founder-leader Vellupillai Prabhakaran's fate remained a mystery, although military sources said a body believed to be his was recovered and its identity was being confirmed.


The LTTE, founded on a culture of suicide before surrender, had shown no sign of giving up. Suicide fighters blew themselves up on the frontline on Sunday morning, and more than 70 were killed trying to flee overnight, the military said.


But by afternoon the military said fighting had slowed, and the pro-rebel web site http://www.TamilNet.com" rel="nofollow">LINK released a statement from the LTTE's head of international relations saying: "This battle has reached its bitter end."


"We remain with one last choice -- to remove the last weak excuse of the enemy for killing our people. We have decided to silence our guns," Selvarajah Pathmanathan's statement said.


The military had no immediate comment.


Pathmanathan, who is wanted by Interpol and was for years the LTTE's chief weapons smuggler, said 3,000 people lay dead and 25,000 more were wounded.


Getting an independent picture of events in the war zone is normally a difficult task, given both sides have repeatedly distorted accounts to suit their side of the story and outside observers are generally barred from it.


PRABHAKARAN DEAD?


Government forces on Saturday took control of the entire island's coast for the first time since war broke out in 1983, cutting off any chance of escape for a militant group whose conventional defeat has been a foregone conclusion for months.


The military has in less than three years captured 15,000 square km (5,792 sq miles) the Tigers had controlled as a quasi-state for Sri Lanka's minority Tamils.


There was still no confirmed word on the fate of Prabhakaran, who built the LTTE into one of the world's most violent insurgent groups through hundreds of suicide bombings and assassinations that earned it a terrorist designation in more than 30 countries.


Military sources told Reuters a body believed to be his was found. Prabhakaran had vowed never to be taken alive.


"They are taking the body for checks to confirm it is the real Prabhakaran," one military official told Reuters on conditions of anonymity. Four other military sources confirmed the recovery and said identity checks were under way.


Military spokesman Brigadier Udaya Nanayakkara denied that.

The cataclysmic end to the war came after the government rejected calls for a new truce to protect civilians, and the Tigers refused to surrender and free 50,000-100,000 the United Nations and others said they were holding as human shields.

Each side accuses the other of killing civilians, and diplomats say there is evidence both have done so. The U.N. rights chief on Friday said she backed an inquiry into potential war crimes and humanitarian violations by both sides.

A wave of diplomatic pressure from the United States, Britain, France and the United Nations last week, including threats to delay a $1.9 billion International Monetary Fund (IMF) loan, appeared to come too late to stop the final fight.

POST-WAR BOOM?

Sri Lanka's $40 billion economy is struggling with depleted foreign exchange reserves, shrinking export revenues for tea and garments, rising import costs, a declining rupee currency and a balance of payments crisis.

Rajapaksa's government is counting on victory in the war to help boost the economy and renew economic growth that for years had been among the highest in south Asia.

The Tigers have warned that their conventional defeat will usher in a new phase of guerrilla conflict targeting Sri Lanka's economically valuable targets, an indirect threat to a tourism sector the government hopes can be boosted after the war.

Nonetheless, people set off fireworks and celebrated in the streets of the capital Colombo on Sunday, a day on which the government asked people to fly the national flag in celebration.

Rajapaksa, who was in Jordan on an official visit, kissed the ground after he returned home early on Sunday, state TV showed.

The government said he would address parliament on Tuesday about the military victory.

The Tigers have answered earlier battlefield losses with suicide bombings in the capital, Colombo. Their widespread use of assassinations and suicide blasts has prompted the United States, European Union and India to class them as terrorists.

Prabhakaran began his fight for a separate state for Sri Lanka's minority Tamils in the early 1970s, and it erupted into full-scale civil war in 1983.

Tamils complain of marginalization at the hands of successive governments led by the Sinhalese majority, which came to power at independence in 1948 and took the favored position the Tamils had enjoyed under the British colonial government.

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Sunny Leone a true Canadian DESI now back in India !.

http://www.expressbuzz.com/edition/default.aspx

COLOMBO: Velupillai Prabhakaran, the elusive leader of Sri Lanka's feared Tamil Tigers, was killed Monday while trying to escape the battlezone in the island's north along with two of his top aides, the military announced.

Prabhakaran, 54, was in a convoy of a van and an ambulance with Pottu Amman, head of the intelligence wing of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE), and Sea Tigers chief Soosai when the military opened fire in an isolated strip of Mullaitivu district.

deleted

Picture of Charles Anthony son of Prabhakarans body:

http://www.defence.lk/new.asp?fname=20090518_03

List of bodies positively identified:

http://www.defence.lk/new.asp?fname=20090518_11


Prabhakarans half burnt body found, DNA identification being performed.

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Sunny Leone a true Canadian DESI now back in India !.

Very sad news:

Prabhakarans family found shot dead:

http://indiatoday.intoday.in/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=43020§ionid=4&issueid=106&Itemid=1

Prabhakaran’s family found shot dead
Headlines Today
Colombo, May 20, 2009

Government of Sri Lanka.LTTE chief V. Prabhakaran’s wife Mathivathani, daughter and younger son Balachandran were found shot dead on Wednesday.

Their bodies, having gunshot wounds in the head, were found a day after pictures of Prabhakaran’s body were released by the Sri Lankan authorities.

The bodies were found in the Nandi Kadal lagoon area barely 600 metres from where Prabhakaran's body was recovered by the Sri Lankan Army.

Balachandran was barely 13. Prabhakaran’s wife and daughter were not in Europe as believed but right there alongside the LTTE chief as he fought a losing battle against the Lankan forces.

According to reports, the family was gunned down by the security forces as it tried to break out of the no-fire zone. Another 150 bodies were found in the lagoon area.

Colonel Karuna Amman, a rebel LTTE leader and now the Lankan Minister for National Integration and Reconciliation, said: \"I am very sorry to hear about the family's death. But on the battlefront, one can't blame the army. Prabhakaran could have saved the family but he made a lot of mistakes. President Rajapaksa would have given them amnesty.”

“Prabhakaran's family became the collateral damage in these operations. Mathivathani was like my sister. The children used to play in our house,” he said.

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Sunny Leone a true Canadian DESI now back in India !.

Tamils should have protested in front of Chinese Embassy [not US consulate].

China also encouraged Pakistan to sell weapons to Sri Lanka and to train Sri Lankan pilots to fly the Chinese fighter jets.

see link

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/asia/article6297463.ece

Sri Lanka ignored international community due to Chinese backing diplomatically and at the UN Security Council.

King is Dead & Long Live the King !.

Where will the Seemaan, Bharathiraja, Nakheeran Gopal, Nedumaran and PMK's will keep their face ?.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/8066129.stm

Tamil Tigers admit leader is dead

The Sri Lankan army released pictures it said were of the dead leader
Sri Lanka's Tamil Tiger rebels have admitted for the first time that their leader Velupillai Prabhakaran is dead.

A statement issued by the Tigers said their "incomparable leader" had "attained martyrdom" and declared a week of mourning.

A spokesman for the group also told the BBC that it would now use non-violent methods to fight for Tamils rights.

Sri Lanka's army last week released pictures it said showed Prabhakaran's body after its final offensive.

The statement from the Tamil Tigers (LTTE) said he was killed "fighting the military oppression of the Sri Lankan government" last Sunday.

The rebels had made a last stand in the north-east of the island after Sri Lankan troops cornered them in a coastal strip.

The Tigers' defeat brought to an end their 26-year fight for a separate Tamil homeland.

The statement was signed by the defeated group's head of international relations, Selvarasa Pathmanathan.

It said that the LTTE had declared a week of mourning for their dead leader, starting on 25 May.

The statement called on Tamils all over the world to "restrain from harmful acts to themselves or anyone else in this hour of extreme grief".

'Non-violent methods'

In a telephone interview with the BBC, Mr Pathmanathan said Prabhakaran had died on 17 May but did not give details of the circumstances.

Mr Pathmanathan said the Tigers would now use non-violent methods to fight for the rights of Tamils and "agreed to enter a democratic process to achieve the rights for self determination of our people".

Most of the Tamil Tigers leadership is believed to have been killed in the fighting.

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Sunny Leone a true Canadian DESI now back in India !.