Source: Hueiyen News Service / Agency
Colombo, May 18 2009:
Sri Lankan troops won the final battle in one of the world's most intractable separatist wars, and put the island nation under government control for the first time since 1983, the military said.
In the climactic final gunbattle, special forces troops killed Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) leader Vellupillai Prabhakaran as he tried to flee the war zone in an ambulance early on Monday, state television reported.
LTTE intelligence chief Pottu Amman and Soosai, head of the "Sea Tiger" naval wing, were also believed killed, the report said.
Prabhakaran founded the LTTE on a culture of suicide before surrender, and had sworn he would never be taken alive.
Army commander Lt-Gen.
Sarath Fonseka said troops on Monday morning had finished the task President Mahinda Rajapaksa gave them three years ago.
"We have liberated the entire country by completely liberating the north from the terrorists.
We have gained full control of LTTE-held areas," Fonseka announced on state TV.
The end of combat and Prabhakaran's death sent the currency and stock markets to one-month and seven-month highs respectively by 0900 GMT.
They had already surged at the opening in anticipation of the war's end.
Rajapaksa declared victory on Saturday, even as the final battle in Asia's longest modern war was intensifying.
It played out on a sandy patch of just 300 sq metres (3,230 sq ft) near the Indian Ocean island's northeastern coast, where the military said the last Tiger fighters had holed up in bunkers and surrounded themselves with land mines and booby traps.