PUTTUMATALAN, Sri Lanka: The leader of Sri Lanka’s Tamil Tiger rebels is trapped in a small strip of jungle and intends to make a final stand with his surviving forces, an army commander said yesterday.
The commander said a rebel spokesman who surrendered to government troops earlier in the week had reported that Velupillai Prabhakaran, 54, was still in charge of his cornered and depleted separatist army in the island’s northeast.
The Tamil Tiger spokesman “says that Prabhakaran was living inside and that he will be there until the last moment,” Brig. Shavendra Silva told reporters. “But, even at the last minute, he will try to escape,” said the commander, who is spearheading the offensive against the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE), who have fought for decades for a separate Tamil homeland.
Indian envoys met Sri Lanka’s president yesterday after New Delhi demanded a truce in the closing phase of a 25-year war which UN data say may have killed almost 6,500 people in the last three months.
A few kilometers from the front, thousands of refugees languished in the blazing tropical sun awaiting transport from the battle zone, where the military is fighting to deal a death blow to the LTTE.
Explosions boomed and smoke billowed from the remaining battlefield, formerly an army-declared no-fire zone but now all that remains of the self-declared state the LTTE has fought since the early 1970s to create for Sri Lanka’s minority Tamils.
“We are clearing mines and other entrapments. The progress has almost stopped because we have come across these things,” Silva told Reuters in Puttumatalan, on the northeastern coast.
The military said more than 108,000 people had poured out of the dwindling rebel area since Monday, when troops blasted an earth barrier the LTTE built to block movement in or out of it.
Diplomatic pressure over the war has boiled over this week with the UN Security Council, the United States, India and others demanding Sri Lanka stop its offensive and the LTTE surrender to avert civilian casualties.
Indian Foreign Secretary Shivshankar Menon and National Security Adviser M.K. Narayanan flew into Colombo yesterday for a meeting with President Mahinda Rajapaksa and then returned to India, Sri Lankan and Indian officials said. There was no word on the content of their discussion.
Thursday’s call for a truce was a swift public reversal by India’s Congress party-led ruling coalition, which backs efforts to wipe out a group India lists as a terrorist organization.
The military said its offensive had already slowed but would not stop. Silva said around 15 soldiers had been killed and 75 wounded in the past few days: “My soldiers are suffering a fair number of casualties because we are trying to protect civilians.”
A UN working document given to the diplomatic community says 6,432 civilians have been killed and 13,946 have been wounded in fighting since the end of January. Two diplomats verified its authenticity. A UN spokesman declined to comment.
