Under pressure following serious losses, the LTTE has asked India to "stop providing military assistance" to the Sri Lankan government and vowed to take back it de facto political headquarters Kilinochchi.
The Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam today virtually conceded that its de-facto capital Kilinochchi has fallen to the Sri Lankan Army, saying that the security forces have entered a "virtual ghost town" as the whole infrastructure of Tamil Tigers have shifted to the northeast.
'If there is to be real peace in Sri Lanka, the end of Prabhakaran has to be brought about by the Tamils themselves and not by the Sinhalese army.'
"Apart from the way the Tiger leader got killed, the military is also still investigating intelligence wing leader Pottu Amman's death as they could not find his body among top level Tiger leaders," the State-run Sunday Observer said.
The newspaper said the defence cooperation between Sri Lanka and Pakistan had grown significantly in recent years as Islamabad, unlike New Delhi, had no problems supplying the state-of-the-art weaponry to Lankan army to accelerate its counter-insurgency operations against the LTTE which finally ended with the killing of Tamil chief Vellupillai Prabhakaran.
Tamil Tigers and their supremo V Prabhakaran are facing imminent defeat at Kilinochchi as the Sri Lankan army is on the verge of overrunning Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam's defacto capital, former top LTTE commander Karuna Amman has said.In an interview to state owned Independent Television Network, Vinayagamoorthy Muralitharan alias Karuna Amman, once the second in command in the LTTE, said the rebel leader was about to be "punished for his insensate crimes".
The announcement of the death of Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam leader V Prabhakaran by the Sri Lankan army has not created any flutter in the Lankan refugee camps in Rameswaram and Madurai, but most inmates dismissed the reports as false. "Prabhakaran is not dead. He will emerge stronger... nobody can touch even his shadow," Andrews, a refugee at Mandapam camp, said. "Prabhakaran has been fighting for us for more than 30 years, we know his strength," said another refugee.
There are elements in Tamil Nadu who could get emotional over the death of Prabakaran and self-motivate themselves to give vent to their anger through terrorism. There is a need for a heightened alert for at least some months.
Is the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam chief Prabhakaran dead? If the Sri Lankan Army is to be believed, Prabhakaran's body was found dead. There are also reports that a huge explosion was heard outside where the LTTE chief was reportedly hiding.
'It's like looking at your own child. Quite large numbers of the dead are under 16. They grab them from their parents and they try to pull them back they get shot. These children have the dog tags and cyanide capsules. The younger children (captured) go for rehabilitation programme,' Brig Priyantha, who commands an artillery division in the north, told British newspaper The Daily Telegraph.
A consignment of 1700 tonnes of food and relief material from India reached Colombo as part of humanitarian aid for thousands of civilian Tamils caught in the war between the LTTE and the island nation's Army, officials said on Sunday.
The United Nations on Friday said that more than 50,000 civilians were still trapped in Sri Lanka's war zone and renewed its call to Colombo to allow an assessment mission into the area to facilitate relief operations and evacuation procedures. The Sri Lankan government had said that an estimated 15,000 people still remained in the war zone.
Cornered Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam chief V Prabhakaran, who is still holed up in a small strip of land in embattled north, may flee from the island using a submarine, a top Sri Lankan army official said on Friday."Prabhakaran, who is present in the no-fire zone along with his son Charles Anthony, Tigers' intelligence chief Pottu Amman and Sea Tiger chief Soosai, might have retained a submarine to escape from the island," said an army official.
As suspense grows about the whereabouts of Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam supremo Velupillai Prabhakaran after the capture of the last bastion of the outfit, the Sri Lankan army chief on Monday said he believed the guerrilla leader could be in an underground bunker or in the no-fire zone.It is widely believed that both Prabhakaran and his son Charles Anthony could be in the 20 sq km no-fire zone, where the rebel remnants are said to be holed up after they were pushed out.
Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam cadres, who escaped the final assault by the Lankan army in May, could give a new lease of life to the now vanquished outfit and are even trying to launch fresh attacks in Sri Lanka, according to a report.
Marumalarchi Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam leader Vaiko on Monday, dubbed the photographs released by the Sri Lankan army which shows him with Liberation Tigers of the Tamil Eelam chief V Prabhakaran as old ones and said there is an "ulterior motive" behind it.
Voicing concern over the plight of civilians caught in the Sri Lankan Army offensive against the Liberation Tigers of the Tamil Eelam in rebel-held areas, India has asked Colombo to ensure their safety and security.
Col Hariharan joins readers on Rediff Chat on February 5, 2009 to answer their queries on the crisis in Sri Lanka and about India's role in the conflict, if any.
The Sri Lankan army's hopes to crush Tamil Tigers and end Asia's longest running civil war are still not around the corner, a media report said. 'Peace still will not be easy or, despite recent good news, immediate. The Tigers may still be able to carry out some terror attacks, though they no longer pose a wide-scale threat. And Colombo faces questions about its commitment to a permanent political settlement,' a Wall Street Journal report said.
While refusing to hazard a guess on the time frame for liberating the entire northern Sri Lanka from the rebels, Army Chief Sarath Fonseka said he had been given another one year extension beginning January 2009 and the period is enough to completely clear the LTTE held areas.
Tamil Tigers, now virtually on the run, have claimed that they still retained the capability to seize back LTTE's de-facto capital of Killinochchi and said the Sri Lankan government's plans to hold elections in the northern areas "would be a futile exercise".
India also hinted its backing to the Sri Lankan Army's action against Tamil Tigers, saying any country is free to take action against terrorists within its legal system.
LTTE's political wing chief, V Nadesan, on Thursday said that the group was ready for a ceasefire now, while accusing the Sri Lankan government of 'abrogating' the six-year-long ceasefire, which came to an end early this year.
At least 56 Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam cadre and ten soldiers were killed in clashes between the Sri Lankan Army and the Tamil Tigers in rebel stronghold of Kilinochchi even as Lankan fighter jets sank an LTTE vessel and bombed rebel targets. "56 LTTE rebels were killed and 87 Tigers injured during the army offensive against the rebel stronghold of Kilinochchi," Army spokesman Udaya Nanayakkara said.
Sri Lanka has made it clear that India does not supply arms to the strife-torn island nation, saying that it understood New Delhi "political compulsions" in this regard.
Sensing an imminent collapse of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam, Sri Lankan forces on Thursday encircled the last 8 sq km patch of area in the northern war zone, where they suspect Tiger supremo V Prabhakaran and his top aides are holed up. A naval blockade was put around northern Mullaittivu close to the areas where LTTE cadres still had access to the sea.
Sri Lankan spin sensation Ajantha Mendis will turn up for Rajasthan in the forthcoming Ranji Trophy season.
In a statement in Chennai, he said the MDMK would not have "any issue in sacrificing two of its MP posts over the Sri Lankan Tamil issue." "The Centre should stop all military assistance to the island nation and ask the Lankan Government to continue peace talks (with LTTE) with the help of the Norwegian government to end the ethnic strife and establish a United Nations Office at Colombo," he said.
India said it will continue to extend its developmental assistance to the friendly people of Sri Lanka.
On January 27, B Muralidhar Reddy, a distinguished journalist with The Hindu was taken to the war zone of Mullaithivu, along with other Sri Lankan journalists by the Sri Lankan defence ministry.
Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam supremo V Prabhakaran will find it difficult to survive beyond six months, Sri Lankan army chief Sarath Fonseka has warned, vowing to eliminate the 3,000-strong Tiger rebels from their stronghold of Wanni in the embattled north. "The three armed forces are confident of wiping out the LTTE, which is now smarting its wounds due to the present military operations," Fonseka, who survived an assassination attempt by LTTE in April 2006, said.
Over 26 Tamil Tiger rebels and one soldier were killed in fresh clashes between government troops and the guerrillas in the restive northern Sri Lanka, the military said on Monday.
"Over 80 per cent of the war against the LTTE has been completed after regaining 80 per cent of the areas under them and killing over 12,000 of their cadres," Lieutenant General Fonseka said. Fonseka's remarks came on Monday as the troops reached about seven kilometres south of Kilali lagoon which separates the Jaffna peninsula from the mainland.
The Sri Lankan Defence Ministry said on Wednesday that its troops killed more than 100 Tamil Tigers while it lost 43 soldiers, with another 33 missing in action. The LTTE, however, claimed that at least 100 Sri Lankan troops were killed in the clashes and put their own losses at 16.
The Sri Lankan Army chief on Monday said his forces have inflicted heavy losses on Tamil Tigers and the militant outfit's capability to wage a conventional war will be wiped out within a year.
Rajapaksa is the first president to be sworn in outside Colombo.
The Sri Lankan President appreciated India's gesture and thanked it for the support and solidarity shown, the statement said.
Scotland Yard's War Crimes Team, which is part of its Counter-Terrorism Command, has launched an investigation into the role of British mercenaries in fighting the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) rebels in Sri Lanka during the 1980s.
The Indo-Sri Lanka joint statement issued at the conclusion of Sri Lankan President Mahinda Rajapakse's visit to India is "biased against the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eeelam," Marumalarchi Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam chief Vaiko said in Chennai Sun.
