Outbreak of peace ... Sri Lankan supporters celebrate as the Tamil Tigers announce they have stopped fighting / AFP
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- Tamil Tigers admit defeat in civil war
- Fighting for over 30 years
- Mystery surrounds leader's whereabouts
SRI Lanka's Tamil Tiger rebels yesterday said they would put down their weapons after a 37-year battle for an independent ethnic homeland, with their last remaining fighters encircled in the jungle.
In what could mark the end of Asia's longest running civil war - one that left more than 70,000 dead in pitched battles, suicide attacks, bomb strikes and assassinations - the rebels appeared to finally admit defeat.
"This battle has reached its bitter end,'' Selvarasa Pathmanathan, the Tigers' chief of international relations, said in a statement carried on the pro-rebel Tamilnet website.
"We remain with one last choice - to remove the last weak excuse of the enemy for killing our people. We have decided to silence our guns. Our only regrets are for the lives lost and that we could not hold out for longer.''
Velupillai Prabhakaran, the Tigers' founder and leader, had been reported to be with his fighters as they made their last stand, though the defence ministry said it had no news of his whereabouts - or whether he was still alive.
Only two years ago, the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) controlled nearly a third of the island nation and operated an effectively autonomous Tamil state with courts, schools and a civil service.
But the government of President Mahinda Rajapakse launched a military offensive which drove the Tigers out of the east and then the north, before trapping the remaining guerrillas on the island's coast.
"They were actually defeated some time ago, but they have formally accepted defeat only now,'' military spokesman Brigadier Udaya Nanayakkara said.
"They fought for an Eelam (separate state) that they could never win. It was only a waste of lives.
They have caused massive death and destruction over the years. Finally they themselves have realised that it is all over.''
There was still considerable doubt whether the defeat would bring peace to the island, however, as the Tigers were thought likely to return to the guerrilla tactics they used to devastating effect in the past.
The military's push for victory has come at the cost of thousands of innocent lives, according to the United Nations, and the government has faced international condemnation for its conduct of the war in recent months.
Shortly before the LTTE's announcement, Sri Lanka's officials said all civilians held hostage by the Tigers had escaped the war zone.
Sri Lankan military leaders say they held back on their final assault to avoid civilian deaths, though thousands are still thought to have been killed in months of heavy fighting.
Tamils complain of marginalisation at the hands of successive governments led by the Sinhalese majority, which came to power at independence in 1948 and took the favoured position the Tamils had enjoyed under the British colonial government.
Mr Prabhakaran began his fight for a separate state for Sri Lanka's minority Tamils in the early 1970s, and it erupted into a full-scale civil war in 1983 that has killed at least 70,000.
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