Sri Lankan soldiers battled into the last redoubt of the Tamil Tigers on Tuesday, and an exodus of people trapped by the rebels in the coastal strip hit 52,000, the military said. The operation gathered speed after the military's noon deadline for the LTTE to surrender passed without any word from the separatists, in what appears to be the final act in Asia's longest-running war. The LTTE hours later vowed no surrender despite being massively outgunned by a military built up to wipe them out. “LTTE will never surrender and we will fight and we have the confidence that we will win with the help of the Tamil people,” Seevaratnam Puleedevan, secretary-general of the LTTE peace secretariat, told reporters over telephone. Tiger leader in war zone LTTE leader Vellupillai Prabhakaran was inside the no-fire zone, Puleedevan said. “He is with us and he is directing the war against the Sri Lankan armed forces and providing a lot of support and assistance to the people,” Puleedevan said. “The time is running out for the international community to intervene, because you know that a bloodbath is going to happen,” he said. Red Cross warns of disaster The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) warned the situation was “nothing short of catastrophic” and urged both sides to prevent further mass casualties among civilians, saying hundreds had been killed in the past 48 hours. “The number of people is up to 52,000 and we have reached the beach,” military spokesman Udaya Nanayakkara said, indicating troops had cut the Tiger's last remaining area in half. He denied civilians were being harmed. The final operation to crush the Tigers set off protests by expatriate Tamils in London and Paris, the latest in weeks of demonstrations against the offensive in cities across the world. In Paris, around 180 people were arrested and four injured when the demonstration turned violent as protesters blocked an intersection and threw objects at buses and police, police said. The UN has long said the LTTE was forcibly preventing people from leaving and making others fight, which the LTTE denies. A ‘Bloody' end? After the conventional end of the war, Sri Lanka will face the challenges of healing divisions between the Tamil minority and Sinhalese majority, and boosting a $40 billion economy suffering on many fronts including a weakening rupee. But on Tuesday for the second day running, the Colombo Stock Exchange gained on positive investor sentiment over the war effort and was at a more than two-month high. Sri Lanka is seeking a $1.9 billion International Monetary Fund loan to shore up a balance of payments crisis and boost flagging foreign exchange reserves, which Central Bank Governor Ajith Nivard Cabraal said should be finished soon. The UN and Western governments have urged the military to renew a brief truce to negotiate the civilians' exit, a plea the government has rejected on the grounds the Tigers have dismissed all entreaties to let the people out.
