Wild celebrations erupted in large parts of Sri Lanka, including capital Colombo, as the authorities announced that the elusive 54-year-old LTTE chief, who fled his home in 1972 with nothing more than a dream to carve out an independent Tamil homeland, had died, ending one of the world’s longest-running insurgencies that bled the tiny country of 20 million people dominated by the Sinhalese. The civil war claimed over 70,000 lives
Soldiers fired at an ambulance in which Prabhakaran was being taken by his loyalists from the war zone in the north. His face apparently caught fire and he breathed his last in a small stretch of land near the coast in Mullaittivu district, about 400 km from here, which he had made his hideout a long time ago, building seemingly impregnable underground bunkers.
Also killed on Monday with Prabhakaran was Shanmugalingam Shivashankar alias Pottu Amman, the dreaded chief of the intelligence wing that was responsible for all the high profile assassinations the Tigers carried out in its long and murderous history.
Other key LTTE leaders whose bodies were found Monday were Soosai, the LTTE’s naval wing leader; Balasingham Nadesan, who headed its political wing; S Puleedevan, head of the Peace Secretariat; Ramesh, a military leader; Ilango, chief of the LTTE police and Kapil Amman from the LTTE intelligence wing.
Puleedevan dealt extensively with the diplomatic community during the Norway-brokered ceasefire agreement between Colombo and the LTTE from 2002 until it collapsed under renewed violence within a few years. Prabhakaran’s death came hours after his elder son Charles Anthony, who headed the group’s IT wing and was being groomed to succeed him, was also killed. It marked the collapse of the LTTE, which Prabhakaran set up in 1976 and which became one of the most well-armed and ruthless insurgent groups in the world with its own army, navy and air force.
The end came three days before the 18th anniversary of the assassination of Rajiv Gandhi, who was blown up by a woman Tamil Tiger suicide bomber at an election rally near Chennai on May 21, 1991. The LTTE also similarly killed Sri Lankan president Ranasinghe Premadasa and several Sri Lankan ministers, politicians and other leading personalities in the civil war.
A triumphant Sri Lankan army chief, Lt Gen Sarath Fonseka, told state-owned TV: “We have now completed our task of liberating the north and east from terrorists.”
The discovery of the bodies of Prabhakaran and the others – television footage showed the blown-up face of Prabhakaran’s son Anthony – marked the macabre end of a group which still commanded a lot of support among Tamil expatriates spread all over the West as well as in sections of Tamil Nadu, where Prabhakaran lived 1983-87 and where the LTTE once had training camps and offices.
Anthony’s body was found at Karayamullavaikkal in Mullaitivu district, “after an unsuccessful and half-hearted attempt by LTTE cadres to evacuate their leader’s son early this morning”, the defence ministry said.