Sri Lankans Say Rebels Crushed and Leader Killed

By THE NEW YORK TIMES

COLOMBO, Sri Lanka — The Sri Lankan authorities declared a final victory in their 26-year war with the Tamil Tiger rebels on Monday. In a state television broadcast, the government said the leader of the insurgents was among 250 fighters killed in a final bloody battle for the last sliver of rebel-held territory.

The government information service sent a text message to cellphones across the country on Monday saying that Vellupillai Prabhakaran, the elusive rebel chief who had come to define the Tamil Tigers, was dead, and state television broke into regular programming to announce the news.

The news provoked celebrations among the Sinhalese majority, with people taking to the streets of the capital here, singing, dancing and setting off firecrackers. People in cars and clusters of people on the streets waving the national flag could be seen here early Tuesday morning, though the heavy presence of soldiers at major checkpoints into the city center appeared to have dampened the celebrations.

The government's account appeared to signal the end of Asia's longest civil war, and of one of the world's most enduring insurgencies. The rebels once controlled a quarter of Sri Lanka's territory as they pressed their campaign for an independent homeland for the country's Tamil minority.

Mr. Prabhakaran's death could mean the end of the rebel movement. A secretive figure whose whereabouts were rarely known, he built himself into the leader of a powerful guerrilla force that was known for its strong internal discipline and brutal tactics, including suicide bombing. His personality held the Tamil Tigers together over the years, but his critics likened him to a cult figure grasping for power, and he is not known to have groomed a successor.

Acknowledging their impending defeat, and encircled by government forces, the Tamil Tigers said Sunday that their struggle had "reached its bitter end." On Monday, the Sri Lankan military said it had crushed the rebels as government troops advanced into an ever-narrowing strip of land measuring no more than half a square mile in the northeast of the country.

"We have successfully ended the war," the defense secretary, Gotabaya Rajapaksa, told the president on Monday in a nationally televised ceremony.

Lt. Gen. Sarath Fonseka, Sri Lanka's army commander, said on state television that the military was still trying to identify Mr. Prabhakaran's body among the corpses on the battlefield. "Prabhakaran's body is among the 300 terrorist bodies that we captured," General Fonseka said.

Outsiders continued to register concerns about the way the battle had been fought.

Foreign ministers of the European Union, meeting in Brussels, said they were appalled by reports of high civilian casualties. They urged an independent inquiry into allegations of violations of international human rights law by both sides.

The Sri Lankan president, Mahinda Rajapaksa, said he would address Parliament on

Tuesday in what was expected to be a formal declaration of victory.

In a day of fast-moving developments, the Sri Lankan military reported Monday that it had killed seven senior leaders of the guerrilla group, known formally as the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam, including the leader of the movement's political wing. It said soldiers also found a body they believed to be that of Charles Anthony, the older of Mr. Prabhakaran's two sons.

It was not possible to verify whether the men had been killed in last-ditch fighting or had taken their own lives using the cyanide capsules that some rebels have worn in vials around their necks.

Sri Lankan state television also broadcast images of a corpse said to be that of Charles Anthony. A military spokesman, speaking in return for customary anonymity, said "the entire area" once under rebel control had "now been liberated."

In the final battle, Mr. Prabhakaran was surrounded early Monday with the last of his fighters, The Associated Press said, citing military officials. In a two-hour firefight, he and his senior lieutenants drove in an armor-plated van accompanied by a bus filled with armed rebels toward approaching Sri Lankan forces.

The battle ended when troops fired a rocket at the van, the unidentified officials said. Contrary to General Fonseka's account, the officials said troops pulled Mr. Prabhakaran's body from the van and identified it.

Confirmation of government claims has been impossible because the military has barred independent journalists, most aid agencies and human rights monitors from the battle zone and refugee-settlement areas.

Daily dispatches from rebel sources inside the war zone and posted on the pro-rebel Web site TamilNet dwindled Monday. A report in the early hours said that "initial reports indicate a determined massacre by the Sri Lanka Army."

International concern has grown over tens of thousands of civilians who were trapped along with rebel fighters in the ever-shrinking war zone. Ron Redmond, a spokesman for the United Nations refugee agency in Geneva, said Monday that an estimated 65,000 civilians fled the conflict zone in recent days, bringing the total displaced by the fighting in the past several months to 265,000.

The displaced are being housed in 42 government-run camps, which "are already buckling under the pressure," Mr. Redmond said.

One of the senior rebels reported killed Monday was Balasingham Nadesan, leader of the group's political wing. The Sri Lankan authorities released a list of other senior insurgents they said had been killed, including those in charge of intelligence and the police, along with military and political officials.

Mark McDonald contributed reporting from Hong Kong, and Alan Cowell from Paris.