COLOMBO, Sri Lanka — Sri Lanka’s president declared victory Saturday in his nation’s quarter-century civil war with the Tamil Tigers rebels. But the group’s top leaders remained at large as troops and the cornered insurgents fought across the war zone.
A triumph on the battlefield appeared inevitable after government forces captured the last bit of coastline under rebel control early Saturday, surrounding the remaining fighters in a 1.2- square-mile patch of land.
Thousands of civilians who had been trapped by the fighting poured across the front lines, the military said.
“My government, with the total commitment of our armed forces, has, in an unprecedented humanitarian operation, finally defeated the LTTE militarily,” President Mahinda Rajapaksa said, referring to the rebels by their formal name, the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam.
Even as Rajapaksa declared victory, the military reported that fighting continued to rage in the northeast war zone.
Huge explosions could be heard across the battlefield as rebels detonated their ammunition stocks and artillery dumps, said military spokesman Brig. Udaya Nanayakkara.
About 11,800 civilians escaped the war zone Saturday, joining more than 200,000 others who fled in recent months and are living in displacement camps.
