COLOMBO: Sri Lankan troops surged forward yesterday after seizing the last big town held by Tamil Tiger rebels, aiming to strike a deathblow to the 25-year separatist insurgency, the military said.

The government troops yesterday pushed deeper into the last pockets of jungle still held by the Tamil Tigers after capturing the rebels’ final urban stronghold and military headquarters.

Army chief Lt. Gen. Sarath Fonseka said the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) now controlled just a “small strip” of land in the northeast, and were cornered and about to be completely defeated. “We have cleared 95 percent of the work (to defeat the Tigers),” Fonseka said, as the island’s government expressed confidence it would soon win one of Asia’s longest-running civil wars after a massive military offensive.

On Sunday, the army announced the capture of Mullaittivu, the northeastern port seized by the LTTE in 1996 and turned into a major rebel military operations and command center.

With the loss of Mullaittivu, the LTTE is now confined to 300 sq. km. of jungle in the Indian Ocean island’s northeast, down from 15,000 sq. km. when the war reignited in 2006.

That leaves the LTTE — on US, EU and Indian terrorism lists — with a handful of bases and village scattered across the jungles from which they have fought since the war kicked off in earnest in 1983.

“The troops are consolidating their positions in Mullaittivu today, and the other troops are moving toward Puthukudiruppu and others are fighting south of there,” military spokesman Brig. Udaya Nanayakkara said, referring to an LTTE-held village. The army’s commander, Lt. Gen. Sarath Fonseka, has forecast total conventional victory by mid-April and that some hardcore LTTE fighters will go underground to carry out hit-and-run attacks. The army is ready for that, he said. “The LTTE has been destroyed as a military force, but they still have terrorist capabilities,” said John Drake, a security analyst with AKE Group in London.

“A lot of the cadres are likely to lay down their arms and pass themselves off as refugees, and lay low for a while.”