A group of Sri Lankan doctors who have been in police custody for nearly two months were brought before the media to recant their reports of mass civilian casualties during the final days of the civil war.

SRI LANKA has for the first time made public its heavy casualties from the last phase of the 25-year war.

Sri Lanka's president declared his country "liberated from separatist terror" today as state television showed the body of the Tamil Tiger rebel leader killed by troops.

Sri Lankan President Mahinda Rajapaksa delivered a victory address to parliament today, declaring that his country had been “liberated” from terrorism after defeating the Tamil Tiger rebels on the battlefield.

THE Tamil Tiger rebels admitted defeat in their 25-year-old war with the Sri Lankan government yesterday, offering to lay down their guns as government forces swept across their last strongholds in the northeast.

The Tamil Tiger rebels admitted defeat in their 25-year-old war with the Sri Lankan government today, offering to lay down their guns as government forces swept across their last strongholds in the northeast.

Sri Lanka’s Tamil Tiger leaders remained at large today after the president declared victory in his nation’s quarter-century civil war with the rebels.

SRI LANKAN troops advanced on the Tamil Tigers yesterday and 5,000 civilians fled the shrinking war zone, signalling an end to Asia’s longest modern war.

Sri Lankan today forces battled to take complete control of the country’s coastline and surround the reeling Tamil Tigers in a final push to destroy the rebel group and end the country’s civil war, the military said.

THE United Nations yesterday said attacks in Sri Lanka that killed hundreds were the bloodbath it had long feared, while the Tamil Tigers and government traded blame ahead of UN Security Council talks about the war.

SRI LANKA’S government dropped leaflets across the northern war zone yesterday urging civilians to flee the fighting amid accusations the military pounded the area with artillery shells that killed at least 10 civilians.

SRI LANKA yesterday gave the Tamil Tigers 24 hours to surrender or die after troops breached a huge earthen defence and unleashed an exodus of tens of thousands of civilians held there by the rebels, the military said.

Civilians are being used as human shields by rebels in war-torn areas of Sri Lanka, Foreign Affairs Minister Micheál Martin said today.

Hundreds of sick and wounded people are stranded in a makeshift hospital in war-wracked northern Sri Lanka, the Red Cross said today as it urged the government and Tamil Tiger rebels to let the patients out of the conflict zone.

Three artillery barrages struck a hospital in Sri Lanka’s chaotic war zone, slamming into its paediatrics ward and its women’s wing and killing nine patients, the Red Cross said today.

Sri Lanka’s president today urged the Tamil Tiger rebels to allow the estimated 250,000 civilians trapped in the northern war zone to flee to safety following reports of heavy casualties among non-combatants stuck in the shrinking territory.

GOVERNMENT forces captured the Tamil Tigers’ de facto capital in northern Sri Lanka yesterday, dealing a devastating blow to the rebels’ quarter-century fight for an independent state, the president said.

The Tamil Tigers’ capital in northern Sri Lanka was captured by government forces today, dealing a devastating blow to the rebels’ quarter-century fight for an independent state, the country’s

A bomb hidden on the baggage rack of a packed bus exploded today, killing 24 people at a bus station outside Sri Lanka’s capital, authorities said.

A SUSPECTED Tamil Tiger suicide bomber assassinated Sri Lanka’s highways minister as he opened a marathon yesterday, in an attack that also killed 13 others and wounded 100, police and officials said.

SRI LANKA’S elusive Tamil rebel supremo was wounded in an air strike last month by security forces shortly after his annual policy broadcast, a privately run newspaper reported yesterday.

Sri Lanka’s military launched a new offensive against the Tamil Tigers rebels on the island’s north-west, a military spokesman said today.

Government forces and Tamil Tiger rebels clashed AGAIN in northern Sri Lanka today, as Britain suspended some aid payments to the country amid the intensified fighting.

A Sri Lankan air force raid on a Tamil rebel training base in the island’s north may have killed or wounded as many as 70 guerrillas, the Defence Ministry said today.

TAMIL Tiger rebels carried out their first air raid yesterday, bombing Sri Lanka’s main military base in a daring night-time mission that forced the closure of the island’s only international airport.

Tamil rebels launched their first-ever airstrike in their 25-year conflict with Sri Lanka’s government, using at least one small plane to bomb an air base outside the capital Colombo today.

Commandos overran a Tamil Tiger rebel base in eastern Sri Lanka today, killing at least 20 guerrillas in fighting that also left three commandos dead, the military said.

An explosion near a school spread panic among students and teachers in Sri Lanka today.

Sri Lankan officials today said commandoes had found torture chambers at a captured rebel base, but the separatists said the cement cells were for holding prisoners and denied any torture had taken place.

Sri Lankan officials today said anti-terrorist commandoes had found torture chambers at a captured rebel base, alleging the insurgents used the cement cells to punish informers and people who tried escape their ranks.

Armed police guarded the office of Dutch aid group ZOA Refugee Care in the Sri Lankan capital today after angry Buddhist monks stormed into the building and accused the group of aiding Tamil Tiger rebels, officials said.

The Sri Lankan army said today that it killed 10 Tamil Tiger rebels during a battle in the country’s volatile east.

The Sri Lankan government today accused the Tamil Tiger rebels of abducting 455 underage combatants from government-controlled areas this year and asked the insurgents to stop the practice.

Tamil Tiger rebels kidnapped 24 Tamil teenagers, mostly girls, while they were attending class ahead of annual examinations, the Sri Lankan military said today.

About 3,000 Tamil civilians braved flooded, mine-laden jungle paths to flee from separatist fighting into government-held areas in eastern Sri Lanka today, officials and witnesses said.

A boat transporting ethnic Tamil refugees capsized off eastern Sri Lanka today, leaving four dead and two missing, police said.

The Sri Lankan government today said it has appealed to the International Committee of the Red Cross and foreign ceasefire monitors to persuade the Tamil Tiger rebels to help create a safe haven for an estimated 35,000 refugees caught in ongoing violence in the east.

A Norwegian peace envoy today postponed his visit to the northern stronghold of rebel Tamil Tigers after a request by the Sri Lankan government, a spokesman for the Norwegian Embassy said.

Tamil Tigers and bereaved families lit lamps and garlanded portraits of fallen fighters in rebel-held parts of Sri Lanka to mark the end of Hero’s Week, as the rebels’ reclusive leader prepared to make his annual policy speech today.

The Sri Lankan military said today it killed at least 19 insurgents in a fierce battle with Tamil Tiger rebels in the east, where many fear escalating violence will lead the country back to full-scale war.

At least 45 Tamils were killed and 125 wounded today when government forces fired artillery and rocket launchers toward a Tamil Tiger rebel-held region in eastern Sri Lanka, a senior rebel official said.

Tamil Tiger rebels rammed a truck loaded with explosives into a naval road convoy in central Sri Lanka today, killing at least 92 sailors who were going on leave, in what the military described as a cold-blooded massacre.

At least 52 Tamil Tiger rebels were killed in heavy clashes with Sri Lankan troops, the military said today.

THE Sri Lankan government and Tamil Tiger rebels have told Norwegian mediators they are willing to return to peace talks without conditions.