Tigers give up, buzz that Prabhakaran body at hand

As Tamil Tiger rebels, ending their 25-year-old war with the Sri Lankan government, admitted defeat and offered to lay down their guns, military sources said a body believed to be that o Tamil Tiger founder leader Vellupillai Prabhakaran has been found but the identity of the corpse has not been confirmed.

“They are taking the body for checks to con firm it is the real Prabhakaran,”one military official told Reuters on condition of anonymity.Four other military sources confirmed the recover and said identity checks were under way.

A senior military official said troops found the bodies of several rebel fighters who had commit ted suicide Sunday when troops surrounded them.

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As Lanka closes in on Tigers, boat with refugees lands in Tamil Nadu

As Sri Lankan troops advanced on the last redoubt of the Tamil Tigers and the exodus of people trapped in a coastal strip crossed 62,000, a boatload of starving Tamil refugees landed on the Tamil Nadu coast this morning. Refugees claimed that over 80 boats carrying civilians were headed for the Indian mainland but officials said intelligence inputs pointed to only four boats making the journey.

Nineteen refugees, including eight women and two children, reached Arcothurai near Point Calimere in Nagapattinam this morning after sailing for nearly 24 hours in a small fishing boat. Police officials said the refugees had no food or water. They were taken to the Mandapam camp in Rameshwaram where a large number of Lankan Tamil refugees are housed.

“Now that the battlefield has shifted to north-east Lanka, people in former LTTE-controlled areas like Mullaithivu and Puthukkudiyiruppu are trying to flee the war by escaping to the Indian mainland,” an official said. As a result, Nagapattinam

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