THE SRI Lankan army yesterday claimed to have battled its way into the heart of the unofficial "capital" of the separatist Tamil Tiger rebels after more than a decade, following months of fierce fighting.
"The fall of Kilinochchi is imminent as security forces have already entered into the town's perimeter from the northern, southern and western edges," a federal defence ministry statement declared in the capital Colombo.
It said heavy fighting was continuing in the see-saw battle with government troops, backed by combat aircraft, helicopter gunships and artillery, forcing the rebels to withdraw in disarray from the city, 355km (220 miles) north of Colombo captured by the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) in 1999.
The army said at least 50 Tamil fighters had died in the battle without announcing its own losses.
Independent verification of either the fighting or casualties was impossible as journalists and neutral observers remain barred from the war zone. But military analysts said that while the government appeared to be prevailing, much fighting lay ahead amid growing concern over the fate of the large number Tamil civilians in the area.
Non-governmental organisations and the government accuse the rebels of using them as human shields and forcing them to fight. The LTTE refutes this claim.
Security analysts, meanwhile, said Kilinochchi's fall would be a devastating military setback for the LTTE in its fight to establish a separate Tamil homeland in the north and east of the island republic. More than 70,000 lives have been lost since it erupted in the early 1980s.
Claiming decades of marginalisation of the island's Tamil minority by Sri Lanka's Sinhalese Buddhist majority, the LTTE launched a civil war in 1983 for an independent state. But after a series of impressive military victories through the 1990s, they are now on the defensive.
Over the past year, they lost strongholds in the east and now are in steady retreat in the north.
There was no word from the rebels on Kilinochchi's capitulation but, earlier this week, they claimed to be successfully defending the town in which they had established courts, police and political administration.
"Losing Kilinochchi would be decisive in determining the future of Sri Lanka's civil strife, as the rebels would be driven out of territory they had long controlled, severely compromising their goal of securing independence," a senior military officer said, declining to be named.
Fierce fighting erupted in Sri Lanka last January after president Mahinda Rajapakse's federal coalition withdrew from the 2002 Norway-brokered truce between the two sides after the LTTE outscored the military almost 11 to one (3,830 incidents to 351) in monitored ceasefire violations.
Mr Rajapakse vowed to crush the Tigers and, in his new year's address, declared that 2009 would see the military's final "heroic victory" over the rebels.