Sri Lanka army says Tamil Tiger leader trapped

Sunday, April 26, 2009 at 4:13 AM Posted by Beijing News


The leader of Sri Lanka's Tamil Tiger rebels intends to make a final stand in the small strip of jungle where he is trapped along with thousands of civilians, the army said Friday.

A top field commander said a rebel spokesman who surrendered to government troops earlier in the week had reported that Velupillai Prabhakaran, 54, was still commanding his cornered and depleted fighters 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," Brigadier 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.

Prabhakaran has not been seen for 18 months, and speculation has been rife that he may have been killed or already fled the island.

The fighting has sparked a wave of international concern for the fate of 50,000 people still trapped in the conflict zone and the UN said it was sending its humanitarian chief John Holmes to Sri Lanka Saturday.

"He will discuss with the government of Sri Lanka issues of pressing importance, including the need for the government to actively facilitate humanitarian missions critical to this area, access to those displaced persons ...and the release of UN staff members detained in camps," UN spokesperson Marie Okabe said at a press briefing in New York.

The UN also estimates that as many as 6,500 civilians may have been killed and another 14,000 wounded in the fighting so far this year, diplomats said.

Colombo said France was gifting a 100-bed field hospital and that French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner will visit Colombo next week.

Reporters taken by the military to the front line at Puttumatalan, about an hour's drive along a bombed-out road from the former Tiger capital Kilinochchi, saw smoke rising from the last patch of land where the rebels were encircled.

Intermittent gunfire and explosions could be heard in the area, but journalists were not allowed to speak with any of the tens of thousands of civilians who managed to escape the conflict zone earlier this week.

Silva told reporters in Kilinochchi, 330 kilometres 180 miles north of the capital Colombo, that many guerrillas wanted to surrender.

The army says the remnants of the LTTE -- who once controlled a third of the island -- are now confined to a 10 square kilometre around four square mile strip of coastline.

"My soldiers are suffering casualties because they cannot fire heavy weapons," Silva told reporters, insisting his troops were under instructions to "maintain zero civilian casualties."

The LTTE have been widely accused of using civilians as human shields. Sri Lanka's hawkish administration is also facing mounting international demands for a truce as a way of sparing civilian lives.

The government, however, has resisted appeals to end its offensive, and has also turned down requests to send humanitarian teams into the area.

Instead it named the army's number-two, Major General G. A. Chandrasiri, as taking charge of relief operations, officials said Friday.

There have been widespread protests by Tamils in foreign capitals, including most recently in Berlin and Geneva.



Supinsky

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