COLOMBO, Sri Lanka – Sri Lankan forces took control of the island's entire coastline Saturday for the first time in decades, sealing the Tamil Tigers in a tiny pocket of territory and cutting off the possibility of a sea escape by the rebels' top leaders, the military said.
President Mahinda Rajapaksa vowed to defeat the remaining rebel fighters and end the 25-year-old civil war by Saturday night.
As the war has entered its final stages, tens of thousands of civilians have fled intense shelling of the last bit of territory under rebel control — a 1.2-square mile (3.1-square kilometer) strip between a lagoon and the sea. More than 17,500 civilians have fled since Thursday, according to military spokesman Brig. Udaya Nanayakkara.
The latest military success gave the government full control of the coast for the first time in nearly a quarter-century. The rebels, who once ran a de facto state across the north, had controlled a formidable navy and sea smuggling operation.
Now on the verge of battlefield defeat, the rebels reiterated their calls for the government to cease its offensive and restart talks to resolve the deep-seated ethnic conflict between the minority Tamils and the Sinhalese majority.
Selvarasa Pathmanathan, in charge of the rebels' international relations, said the group welcomed President Barack Obama's call Wednesday for a peaceful end to the conflict and would do "anything that is necessary" to spare the civilians. However, he did not specifically say whether the rebels would accede to Obama's request that they lay down their arms and surrender.
Army divisions moving toward one another along the island's northeastern coast linked up at the village of Vellamullivaikkal early Saturday, Nanayakkara said.
Government forces have been hunting for the reclusive Tamil Tiger leader Velupillai Prabhakaran and his top deputies for months, but it was unclear if they were still in the remaining patch of rebel territory or had already fled overseas.
International concern has grown for the tens of thousands of civilians still trapped in the sliver of land amid the unrelenting artillery bombardments shaking the war zone, and the Red Cross has warned of "an unimaginable humanitarian catastrophe" for the hundreds of wounded trapped without treatment.
Hoping to end the bloodshed, U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon sent his chief of staff, Vijay Nambiar, to Sri Lanka for a second time to try to bring the conflict to a peaceful conclusion. Nambiar was to arrive Saturday and hold meetings with top government officials.
The government has brushed off repeated calls from foreign diplomats for a humanitarian truce in the conflict, saying it would only give the reeling rebels time to regroup.
The U.N. says 7,000 civilians were killed and 16,700 wounded in the fighting from Jan. 20 through May 7, according to a U.N. document given to The Associated Press by a senior diplomat.
Since then, doctors in the war zone say more than 1,000 civilians have been killed in a week of heavy shelling that rights groups and foreign governments have blamed on Sri Lankan forces. The government denies firing heavy weapons into the war zone.
Reports of the fighting are difficult to verify because the government has barred most journalists and aid workers from the conflict zone.
Some 4,500 civilians escaped the war zone Saturday, Nanayakkara said. More than 200,000 civilians have escaped the conflict zone in recent months and are being held in displacement camps.
On Thursday night, Rajapaksa said the war would be over within 48 hours and that the trapped civilians would be quickly freed from the territory still controlled by the guerrillas.
Foreign Minister Rohitha Bogollagama told The Associated Press in Jordan that Sri Lankan soldiers were probably fighting their final battle against the remaining rebel fighters. He said reports have indicated that relatives of top rebel leaders are starting to flee the war zone.
The navy intercepted a boat off the northeastern coast Friday and arrested the wife, son and daughter of the rebels' sea wing leader, who were among 11 people on board, Nanayakkara said.