70 rebels 'killed fleeing war zone'
Sri Lankan troops have killed at least 70 Tamil Tiger rebels who attempted a mass break out of an encirclement by government forces, a military spokesman said.
Udaya Nanayakkara said the Tamil Tigers had attempted to escape from a tiny strip of land in the north. He said 70 bodies of Tamil Tigers had been recovered.
Sri Lanka's president Mahinda Rajapaksa had earlier declared victory in his nation's quarter century civil war with the rebels.
A triumph on the battlefield appeared inevitable after government forces captured the last bit of coastline under rebel control, surrounding the remaining fighters in a 1.2-square mile patch of land.
"My government, with the total commitment of our armed forces, has in an unprecedented humanitarian operation finally defeated the LTTE militarily," Mr Rajapaksa said referring to the rebels by their formal name, the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam. "I will be going back to a country that has been totally freed from the barbaric acts of the LTTE."
The rebels, who once controlled a de facto state across much of the north, have been fighting since 1983 for a separate state for minority Tamils after decades of marginalisation by the Sinhalese majority.
Responsible for hundreds of suicide attacks - including the 1991 assassination of former Indian Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi - the Tamil Tigers have been branded terrorists by the US, EU and India and shunned internationally. They also controlled a conventional army, with artillery units, a significant navy and even a tiny air force.
After repeated stalemates on the battlefield, the military broke through the rebel lines last year and forced the insurgents into a broad retreat, capturing their administrative capital at Kilinochchi in January and vowing to retake control over the rest of the country.
The rebels have insisted that if they are defeated in conventional battle, they will return to their guerrilla roots.
