The Ceylon News

Sri Lankan troops have captured the last patch of coastline held by the separatist Tamil Tigers, according to a senior military source.

Two army divisions fighting along the coastline from the southern and northern ends of the conflict zone linked up on Saturday morning, the official said.

"The Tigers still have a few square kilometres of land, but not the use of the beach front," he said, referring to the fighters of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam.

Brigadier Udaya Nanayakkara, the defence ministry spokesman, told Al Jazeera: "After this linking up of two divisions, the entire coastal stretch has been denied to the LTTE. ... We have completely denied the LTTE's Sea Tigers access to the sea.

"The LTTE will have no other choice but to surrender or commit suicide."

Rescue pledge

Mahinda Rajapaksa, the president of Sri Lanka, had vowed on Thursday to end the war against the LTTE within 48 hours.

He also said civilians in the war zone would be quickly freed.

Speaking to Al Jazeera on Friday, Nanayakkara stressed that the "main aim is to rescue civilians. Rescue operations are going on."

He claimed that once the real figures of civilians trapped in the conflict zone become known, those cited by humanitarian organisations would be exposed as exaggeration.

International concern has grown for tens of thousands of civilians under threat from artillery raids in the war zone.

Hundreds trapped

The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) has given warning of "an unimaginable humanitarian catastrophe" for the hundreds of wounded trapped without treatment.

"No humanitarian organisation can help them in the current circumstances. People are left to their own devices," Pierre Krahenbuhl, the ICRC's director of operations, said.

Ban Ki-moon, the UN secretary-general, has sent his chief of staff, Vijay Nambiar, to Sri Lanka for a second time to try to bring the conflict to a peaceful conclusion.

Focus: Sri Lanka

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Nambiar is expected to meet senior government officials after he arrives on Saturday, and push for ways "to secure the safety of the 50,000 to 100,000 civilians remaining inside the combat zone", Gordon Weiss, a UN spokesman, said.

About 200,000 civilians have escaped the war zone in recent months and are being held in overwhelmed displacement camps.

Reports of the fighting are difficult to verify because the government has barred most journalists and aid workers from the conflict zone.

The UN says 7,000 civilians were killed and 16,700 wounded in the fighting from January 20 until May 7.

Since then, doctors in the war zone say more than 1,000 civilians were killed in a week of heavy shelling that rights groups and foreign governments have blamed on Sri Lankan forces.

Sri Lanka denies firing heavy weapons into the war zone.

Navi Pillay, the UN's human rights chief, has said both sides may be guilty of war crimes.