Tamil Tiger leader Velupillai Prabhakaran is dead, the Sri Lankan government said Monday, ending the rebel chief's nearly three-decade mission to establish an independent state for minority Tamils.
The government information department made the announcement by sending a text message to cell phones throughout Sri Lanka, while state television interrupted its regular programming to report the news.
Upon hearing of Prabhakaran's death, thousands of Sri Lankans spilled into the streets of the capital, Colombo, singing and dancing.
Lt. Gen. Sareth Fonseka, head of Sri Lanka's army, said on television that soldiers cleared the remaining rebels from a small patch of land on the northern coast on Monday morning.
According to Fonseka, officials had yet to confirm that one body soldiers found in the war zone was indeed Prabhakaran.
However, it is believed that Fonseka was merely holding back so that President Mahina Rajapaksa could formally announce Prabhakaran's death.
"We can announce very responsibly that we have liberated the whole country from terrorism," Fonseka told state television.
Fonseka and other commanders were to formally announce their victory to the president later Monday evening.
Senior military officials said Prabhakaran and his top lieutenants were in an armour-plated van, which they drove alongside a bus filled with rebel fighters, when they encountered Sri Lankan soldiers.
The confrontation led to a two-hour firefight, the officials said, which soldiers ended by firing a rocket at the van.
Soldiers pulled Prabhakaran's body from the van, as well as those of Soosai, the head of the rebels' naval wing, and Pottu Amman, the rebels' intelligence head.
The military had earlier announced that it also killed several top rebel leaders, including Prabhakaran's son Charles Anthony, as well as Balasingham Nadesan, leader of the Tigers' political wing, Seevaratnam Puleedevan, the head of the peace secretariat, and Ramesh, a top military leader.
While Prabhakaran's death may signal the end of the Tamil rebel movement in Sri Lanka, it could also turn him into a martyr for others who may take up the cause of establishing a Tamil state.
Had he escaped, Prabhakaran would likely have made good use of his sophisticated international smuggling network and support from Tamil expatriates to re-establish his rebel movement.
Suren Surendiran, a spokesperson for the British Tamils' Forum, the largest organization for Tamils living in Britain, said the expatriate community was in mourning.
"The people are very somber and very saddened. But we are ever determined and resilient to continue our struggle for Eelam," he said, used the name Tamils hope to call their independent homeland. "We have to win the freedom and liberation of our people."
The Tigers have been fighting since 1983 for an independent homeland for Tamils, who feel oppressed by the Sinhalese majority.
For years, the Tigers controlled a large swath of land along the northeastern coast, fending off military offensives by the Sri Lankan army with an infantry, a naval wing and even an air force.
Prabhakaran also controlled the Black Tigers, a suicide attack squad that the government blamed for hundreds of bombings.
The rebel leader demanded fierce loyalty from his followers, many of whom wore cyanide capsules around their necks to bite into should they face capture.
The war has killed some 70,000 civilians, and the fighting rose sharply in the last several months.
Late last year, the military launched a massive offensive against the Tigers, which ramped up violence in the region and sent tens of thousands of civilians fleeing from the area.
The fighting has created what international aid groups call a drastic humanitarian crisis, with some 250,000 malnourished and injured people expected to be packed into displacement camps that are over-crowded and under-equipped.
The Sri Lankan government has long accused the Tigers of using civilians as human shields, a charge the rebels deny. The rebels accuse the government of firing heavy weapons on its own people.
Representatives for the European Union said Monday that officials will call for an independent investigation into whether war crimes were committed in relation to the deaths of civilians.
British Foreign Secretary David Miliband said there have been "very grave allegations" of war crimes against both the Sri Lankan government and the Tigers that "should be properly investigated."
With files from The Associated Press
