Tamil Tigers given surrender warning

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.

Sri Lanka’s quarter-century separatist war has come down to a tiny strip of coastline, where the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) are making a last stand while urging a ceasefire to protect civilians they have refused to free.

With so many civilians now outside the 17sq km no-fire zone that is the only battlefield left, Sri Lanka warned LTTE founder Vellupillai Prabhakaran to surrender or face a last military showdown.

“We have given a final warning to Prabhakaran and his terrorist group to surrender to the government forces within 24 hours from 12 noon,” defence spokesman Keheliya Rambukwella told reporters at the air force battle management centre in Colombo.

“Thereafter will be a military course of action. That is the best option,” Rambukwella said.

The military in the past has given similar ultimatums to the LTTE and it was not clear whether passage of the deadline would mean soldiers would immediately begin attacking.

The LTTE could not be reached for comment, but the pro-rebel web site www.TamilNet.com reported “hundreds of dead bodies and wounded civilians were still lying in Matthalan and Pokkanai”, two villages in the no-fire zone.

“A large number of the civilians fled toward LTTE-held areas while around 8,000 were trapped and captured by the [Sri Lankan army],” it said, quoting its own correspondent. It was impossible independently to verify the competing accounts since the battle zone is off-limits to most outsiders.

Prabhkaran, 54, and his fighters wear cyanide vials around their necks to be taken in case of capture. For decades, he has vowed no surrender in his single-minded fight to create a separate state for Tamils.

In London, expatriate Tamils blocked streets outside Britain’s parliament demanding a ceasefire, the latest in two weeks of protests there and in other world cities by Tamils in the diaspora, long the LTTE’s base of financial support.

With Asia’s longest-running civil war now nearing its end, Sri Lanka will face the twin challenges of healing the divide between the Tamil minority and Sinhalese majority, and reviving a $40 billion (€30bn) economy suffering on multiple fronts. Between 25,000 and 35,000 people fled yesterday, but counts were not finalised, said Lakshman Hulugalle, director of the military’s Media Centre for National Security. Later, the military said another 2,000 came out by boat.