Word: ltte
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...around Colombo on Monday as Sri Lankans celebrated what they hoped would be the end to a civil war that has plagued the nation since 1983. At 1:40 p.m., Sri Lanka's government radio announced that Velupillai Prabhakaran, the elusive leader of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE), was killed early this morning by special forces in the island's northern Karayamullavaikkal area. The 54-year-old Prabhakaran, who headed the Tamil separatist movement for 33 years, had been trying to flee the shrinking 100-m by 100-m pocket of land still under Tiger control...
...Prabhakaran's trusted lieutenants - intelligence head Pottu Amman and Sea Tiger leader Soosai - were also killed in the ambush. "LTTE terrorists made their final bid to evacuate its leaders early this morning as army élites pierced in to the last remaining LTTE foothold last night," the Defense Ministry said in a statement later in the day. "The terrorists managed to take hold of two vehicles and [are] believed to have put their senior leaders into those vehicles before they started moving northward." (See pictures of Sri Lanka's rebel-held territory...
...were cornered into the narrow patch on Sunday after President Mahinda Rajapaksa had announced the day before that the Tigers were a spent force. "We are not after any person or any personal agenda. We want to rid this country of terrorism; that is why we went after the LTTE leadership," Lakshman Hulugalle, director-general of the Defense Ministry's Media Centre for National Security told TIME. "With the leadership wiped out, this organization cannot re-emerge." Army Commander Lieutenant Sareth Fonseka also said that Prabhakaran's death marked the end of the LTTE-led separatist war. "We have...
...Tiger websites had reported that the Tiger leaders had contacted the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) on Sunday morning to inform the aid group that only some 1,000 people remained in the narrow area under Tiger control, including the Tiger leadership, nonmilitary LTTE members and cadres, some injured. The pro-Tiger site TamilNet had reported that LTTE leadership told the ICRC that "there was no firing from the LTTE side" and "urged the ICRC to evacuate the wounded." Both the leaders mentioned in the report were later killed by government forces...
...LTTE, meanwhile, continues to use the remaining civilians as human shields, according to the Army and human rights groups. Military sources say that the Tigers have moved the civilians away from the perimeter of the war zone, where they could escape as soon as the Army advanced, into the area's middle where the Mullivaikal hospital is located. On April 20, an estimated 100,000 civilians fled the zone within 72 hours when the Army breached a major Tiger fortification. Sri Lankan troops advanced a further 300 meters into Tiger territory on Tuesday. "We still believe that thousands of people...