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.

The editor of a Sri Lankan newspaper critical of the government was shot dead as he drove to work today, the second violent attack on media this week.

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.

PAKISTAN’S top envoy has escaped a mine blast which killed seven people as Tamil Tiger rebels accused Sri Lanka of bombing an orphanage and killing 61 amid ferocious battles elsewhere.