The Ceylon News

Tamil Tigers supremo Velupillai Prabhakaran and his top aides were recently missed by a whisker by the security forces, a top Sri Lankan commander said, claiming that the rebel leader had limited options either to give up or commit suicide.

“We got to know that Prabhakaran had moved through the Pudukudiryirippu-Iranmalai road on a day between March 29-31, just about two days before the Army fully laid siege to that area,” GoC 58 Division Brig Shavendra Silva said.

“Yes I regret we missed him by a whisker or else things could have been over faster,” he said, adding Prabhakaran cannot escape through the road.

Silva said things have come to such a head that women had to hide their son in a hole dug in and covered by the kitched fire place to escape the prying LTTE men on the look out for new Tiger fighters near the ‘no-fire zone’.

The senior LTTE leader Daya Master also told the Army during interrogation that “only sea Tiger leader Soosai, the coordinating LTTE Army head Pottu Amman and Prabhakaran’s son Charles Anthony are going to stay with him”.

“The rest of the senior aides will try to escape as I did,” Shavendra Silva quoted Daya Master, the former LTTE media coordinator, to say.

"Yes Prabhakaran lived around here not far ago and people suffered here under him," Silva told reporters who visited the war zone.

According to another senior military officer, Prabhakaran is facing "reverses after reverses" in his struggle for a separate Eelam state.

Many Tiger cadres have been forced to give their lives "under duress", since Prabhakaran introduced suicide bombers, mostly young women, and targeted major government installations, including military headquarters and international airport in Sri Colombo, he said.

The media were also allowed a brief chat with the famished looking IDPS passing through the Pudukudiyirippu area.

"The LTTE does not have to tell us anything. We dare not to try to escape as they have sophisticated weapons and we had to wait for our time to come to escape," Arumugam, an IDP, said.

Children as young as 12 are being given guns and forced to fight on the frontline alongside desperate Tamil Tiger rebels cornered inside Sri Lanka's no-fire zone, the UN said today.

Those forcibly recruited included the 16-year-old daughter of a member of the UN staff, who had stayed inside the narrow strip of coast where the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) are making their last stand.

Gordon Weiss, the UN spokesman in Sri Lanka, said there had been credible reports of clashes between LTTE members and families on the beaches who had tried to prevent their children being taken. Some of those who resisted had been beaten or shot, he said.

"They are sitting there on the sand and groups of armed LTTE come along and demand a member of the family joins them. They ask for one or two children and they are running around grabbing people," Weiss said.

"They have been taking children as young as 12, handing them a gun and marching them off and putting them to work. They are not being seen again by their families."

As the fighting intentisifes, the LTTE is running short of experienced fighters and is relying once again on children to boost its numbers.

Weiss said many children living in areas controlled by the LTTE before the latest offensive received military training as part of their schooling. He added that the 16-year-old UN family member had now managed to escape from the fighting.

The Sri Lankan government said that close to 200,000 people were now either inside the internment camps it had set up outside the no-fire zone, or were emerging from the combat area.

UN sources said today they believed that, despite the exodus, as many as 150,000 people may remain inside the no-fire zone.

In a statement, the foreign ministers of the G8 countries today demanded that both sides take all necessary actions to prevent further civilian deaths.

According to official UN figures, at least 2,000 people are believed to have died in the fighting in the last month, although this figure does not include all of those killed in this week's intense fighting. Yesterday two UN officials privately confirmed that the civilian death toll since January 20 is close to 6,500. Thousands more have been injured.

The Tamil Tigers claimed today that food stocks in the region were depleted and starvation was "imminent". Doctors working inside the no-fire zone have said some people have already died from malnutrition.

It is impossible to verify any of the claims because both the government and the rebels have prevented independent journalists from entering the area. The Sri Lankan military did take one party of journalists into the area yesterday, but access was only granted under strict supervision.

India sent two officials to Sri Lanka yesterday to demand a break in the fighting to allow civilians to leave, but the Sri Lankan government knows that victory is within its grasp and is in no mood to allow the LTTE any breathing space.

The US government said it was "deeply concerned" about the civilians and warned that abuses of humanitarian law would make post-conflict reconciliation difficult.

The UN sent John Holmes, its top humanitarian official, to Sri Lanka today to look into the welfare of the civilians.

The UN deputy spokeswoman Marie Okabe said the humanitarian situation "continues to be critical, civilian casualties have been tragically high and their suffering horrendous".

The pro-Tamil group War Without Witness claimed today that more than 26,184 Tamils remained unaccounted for.