Sri Lankan forces capture a key Tamil rebel town

Sri Lankan forces on Friday captured the Tamil Tigers’ de facto capital, a major victory in a decades-long battle to prevent the rebels from establishing an independent state.

The rebels, who still control 620 square miles of jungle in the northeast, an area slightly larger than that of Los Angeles city, swiftly sent a message that they would fight on. They carried out a suicide attack near air force headquarters in the capital, Colombo, killing three airmen and wounding 37 people, authorities said.

Sri Lanka’s ethnic minority Tamils have long complained that they are treated as second-class citizens by the Sinhalese majority. They say Sinhalese are favored for government jobs and that the Sinhalese language is used as the nation’s de facto official language. They also have accused the government of sending Sinhalese settlers into traditionally Tamil regions to overwhelm them demographically.

The fall of Kilinochchi was a devastating blow to the rebels’ dream of establishing a state for Tamils in the northeast.

The rebels had built a massive 10.5-mile earth-and-moat fortification to defend Kilinochchi. Over the last two months, they held off government troops in battles that reportedly left hundreds of fighters dead.

Army troops said they entered the city with only minimal resistance, an apparent sign that the rebels had retreated to their jungle bases, analysts said. The rebel-affiliated TamilNet website said the Tamil Tigers had moved their headquarters farther northeast before the town fell.

The capture of Kilinochchi is a milestone in a civil war that has killed at least 70,000 people and plagued this Indian Ocean island nation on and off for 25 years. A 2002 cease-fire collapsed in new fighting three years ago, and government forces have pushed deep into the rebels’ heartland in recent months.

Foreign mediators have called for a political solution, saying that warfare will not resolve the tensions between the Tamil minority, which makes up 18% of the population, and the Sinhalese majority, which accounts for 74%.

The Tamil Tigers have been blamed for scores of bombings and suicide attacks and are listed as a terrorist group by the United States and European Union.

In Washington, State Department spokesman Gordon Duguid described the Tigers as “one of the most notorious and brutal terrorist organizations,” but called for a peaceful dialogue to resolve the legitimate concerns of Tamils.

President Mahinda Rajapaksa, who has vowed to destroy the group formally known as the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam, announced the fall of Kilinochchi in a nationally televised speech.

Celebrations erupted across Colombo, where people flooded the streets, dancing, waving Sri Lankan flags and setting off firecrackers.