Sri Lankan troops move in on Tigers
At least 62,000 flee, military says
Sri Lankan soldiers battled into the last redoubt of the Tamil Tigers yesterday, and an exodus of people trapped by the rebels in the coastal strip hit more than 62,000, the military said.
The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) warned the situation was "nothing short of catastrophic" and urged both sides to prevent further mass casualties among civilians, saying hundreds had been killed in the past 48 hours.
The neutral agency did not assign blame to either side.
The operation gathered speed after the military's noon (0630 GMT) deadline for the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) to surrender passed without any word from the separatists, in what appears to be the final act in Asia's longest-running war.
Hours later the LTTE vowed no surrender, despite being massively outgunned by a military built up to wipe them out and finish a conflict that has percolated since the early 1970s but erupted into full-blown civil war in 1983.
"LTTE will never surrender and we will fight and we have the confidence that we will win with the help of the Tamil people," Seevaratnam Puleedevan, secretary-general of the LTTE peace secretariat, told Reuters by telephone.
Sri Lanka's military, in what it dubbed the world's largest hostage rescue operation, moved in to keep the stream of people moving and give troops a clear shot at the LTTE and its elusive leader Vellupillai Prabhakaran.
"So far 62,600 people have come out and still they are coming," military spokesman Udaya Nanayakkara said. Earlier, he said soldiers had reached the beach, which meant they had divided the Tigers' last remaining area into two.
He denied civilians were being harmed.
The Tigers' Puleedevan said Prabhakaran, the 54-year-old guerilla who since the 1970s has single-mindedly led a fight for a separate nation for Tamils, was directing the fight in what the army set up as a no-fire zone, but is now a last battleground.