Sri Lanka rebels concede defeat in civil war

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(Agencies)
Updated: 2009-05-18 07:59

COLOMBO, Sri Lanka – The Tamil Tigers admitted defeat Sunday in their fierce quarter-century war for a separate homeland as government forces raced to clear the last pockets of rebel resistance from the war zone in the north.

Far from the battlefield, thousands of Sri Lankans danced in the streets of Colombo, celebrating the stunning collapse of one of the world's most sophisticated insurgencies. But with rebel leader Velupillai Prabhakaran still at large, the threat of renewed guerrilla warfare remained.

Sri Lanka rebels concede defeat in civil war
In this handout photo provided by the Sri Lanka Army, Sri Lankan army soldiers receive internally displaced ethnic Tamil civilians in Kariyalamullivaikal, Sri Lanka, Saturday, May 16, 2009. [Agencies]

Several rebel fighters committed suicide when they were surrounded, but it wasn't clear whether Prabhakaran or other leaders were among them.

The Tamil Tigers once controlled a shadow state complete with courts, police and a tax system across a wide swath of the north. By Sunday, troops had surrounded the remaining rebels in a 0.4-square-mile (1-square-kilometer) patch of land and were fighting off suicide bombs and other attacks, the military said.

Huge clouds of black smoke rose over the battlefield as soldiers inspected the charred remains of rebel trucks and heavy artillery pieces, according to footage broadcast on state television. Civilians carrying backpacks and rolling suitcases were escorted from the area.

Military spokesman Brig. Udaya Nanayakkara said the civilians who had been trapped in the war zone — 63,000 in all — fled to safety during the past 72 hours. But rebel official Selvarasa Pathmanathan said the bodies of thousands of wounded and slain civilians lay strewn across the war zone.

"This battle has reached its bitter end," Pathmanathan said in a statement e-mailed to The Associated Press. "It is our people who are dying now from bombs, shells, illness and hunger. We cannot permit any more harm to befall them. 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."

Media Minister Anura Yapa dismissed the appeal. "We want to free this country from the terrorist LTTE," he said, referring to the group by its formal name, the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam.

The military spokesman denied the rebels had laid down their weapons. "Fighting is still going on in small pockets," Nanayakkara said.

Rights groups have accused the rebels of holding civilians as human shields, and blamed the government for shelling the densely populated area where they sought refuge. Both sides denied the accusations.

With most journalists and aid workers barred from the war zone, it was not possible to verify the accounts of either side. Health officials in the area have said thousands of civilians were killed in shelling since the beginning of the year.

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