The Tamil Tigers conceded defeat in Sri Lanka's 25-year civil war yesterday, with some staging suicide attacks to try to repel a final assault by troops determined to annihilate them.
President Mahinda Rajapaksa had already declared victory over the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE), and the military said the bulk of the fighting was over by the time the rebels said they had been beaten.
Even though there was little doubt about the final outcome of Asia's longest modern war, sporadic battles were still being fought late yesterday and no one was willing to predict when the last bullet would be fired.
"We are doing the mopping-up operations," military spokesman Brigadier Udaya Nanayakkara said. "Suicide cadres are coming in front of troops in the frontline and exploding themselves."
President Rajapaksa is due to make a formal victory announcement in Parliament tomorrow morning, but yesterday flags were flying, people were dancing and lighting off fireworks in celebration.
The last act was playing out in what the military said was less than one square kilometre, where the LTTE carried out suicide attacks yesterday before troops freed the last of 72,000 civilians who have fled over four days.
LTTE founder-leader Vellupillai Prabhakaran's fate remained a mystery, although military sources said a body believed to be his was recovered and its identity was being confirmed.
The LTTE, founded on a culture of suicide before surrender, at the last minute issued a statement from its diplomatic chief saying: "This battle has reached its bitter end."
"We remain with one last choice - to remove the last weak excuse of the enemy for killing our people. We have decided to silence our guns," said Selvarajah Pathmanathan's statement, posted on the pro-rebel www.Tamil.net web site.
Mr Pathmanathan, who is wanted by Interpol and was for years the LTTE's chief weapons smuggler, said 3,000 people lay dead and 25,000 more were wounded.
Getting an independent picture of events in the war zone is normally a difficult task, given both sides have repeatedly distorted accounts to suit their side of the story and outside observers are generally barred from it.