Mahinda Rajapaksa, Sri Lanka’s president, is planning on Tuesday to declare total victory in the nation’s civil war after a weekend in which government forces closed the net on the leaders of the Tamil rebels holed up in a pitch of sand and jungle.
The army said on Sunday night that the leaders of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam separatist group were now boxed into less than one square kilometre and that more than 50,000 civilians had fled the conflict area in recent days. It did not provide details of casualties amid reports from aid agencies that hundreds had been killed or wounded in the latest fighting.
