LTTE supremo Velupillai Prabhakaran's body has been cremated by Sri Lankan security forces, army chief Gen Sarath Fonseka has said amid claims by the rebels that their chief is alive. Fonseka said the identification of 54-year-old Prabhakaran's body came on Tuesday morning after heavy confrontations in the northeastern Mullaittivu district the previous day.
UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon arrived in Sri Lanka late on Friday, the first major international figure to visit the country since President Mahinda Rajapaksa declared victory over the Tamil Tiger rebels earlier this week.
He said unnamed foreign elements were behind the LTTE and were trying to sabotage the government's military campaign which ended successfully earlier this week with the complete defeat of the guerrillas.
Relieved after winning the battle against LTTE, Sri Lankan President Mahinda Rajapakse has said he wished Tiger supremo Vellupillai Prabhakaran had been caught alive so that he could have faced trial in India for former Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi's assassination.
Sri Lankan Army lost nearly 24,000 personnel in its three-decade long conflict with the LTTE rebels, including over 6,200 in the latest offensive which began in late 2006, a senior official said on Friday.
With LTTE out of its way, Sri Lanka on Thursday assured India that it will implement a law for devolving powers to Tamil-dominated areas as both the countries agreed on the need for a lasting political solution to the ethnic conflict.
Prime Minister Manmohan Singh's special envoys M K Narayanan and Shivshankar Menon on Thursday met Sri Lankan President Mahinda Rajapaksa and sought a political solution to the Tamil question while offering help in the reconstruction effort following elimination of the LTTE.
National Security Adviser M K Narayanan and Foreign Secretary Shivshankar Menon arrived in Colombo on Wednesday for talks with Sri Lankan President Mahinda Rajapaksa following end of the war against LTTE.
There are nearly 2 million Sri Lankan Tamils living outside Sri Lanka who have supported the Tamil cause for years. Now with images of Prabhakaran's body being flashed across the media, the Sri Lankan diaspora is stepping up protests in many capitals.
A day after his armed forces eliminated Velupillai Prabhakaran, 64-year-old Rajapaksa sought to reach out to the minority in the north with a brief address in Tamil in the opening speech of Parliament session as the army released pictures of the once-elusive Tiger chief's body with bullet wounds on his forehead.
