Colombo: Sri Lanka's military said soldiers captured the largest training base for Tamil Tiger suicide bombers in an army offensive to defeat the group in the north and end the 26-year conflict.

Evidence suggests that Velupillai Prabhakaran, the leader of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam, frequently visited the base where “LTTE human bombs were hosted with their ‘final dinner of death,''' the Defense Ministry said in a statement on its Web site late yesterday.

The LTTE has used its “Black Tiger'' suicide squads to carry out attacks, including raiding an air force base in the north in October 2007 that destroyed eight military helicopters and aircraft. The group was the first to use female suicide bombers and develop explosive belts and vests, the U.S. Office of the Coordinator for Counterterrorism said in a 2006 report.

Sri Lanka's army has driven the Tamil Tigers, who are fighting for a separate Tamil homeland, from their main bases into an area of less than 300 square kilometers (120 square miles) in the northeast. The fighting is causing a humanitarian catastrophe among an estimated 250,000 civilians trapped in combat zones, the United Nations and aid groups say.

LTTE fighters failed in attempt to break out from areas around Mullaitivu, the Defense Ministry said yesterday. Air force jets mounted 13 missions between Feb. 2 and Feb. 3 targeting rebel strongholds, it said. The LTTE hasn't commented on the fighting.

Imminent defeat

President Mahinda Rajapaksa, in an Independence Day speech yesterday, said the LTTE will be defeated within “a few days'' and the country freed from the “dark shadow of terrorism.''

The US and the UK two days ago appealed to the government and the LTTE to introduce a “temporary no-fire period'' so that aid agencies are able to reach the conflict zone and civilians can leave.

Tamils demonstrated in European cities on Wednesday demanding an end to the conflict, Agence France-Presse reported. More than 10,000 people gathered outside the UN's European headquarters in Geneva, calling on the world body to secure a cease-fire while 10,000 rallied in Paris and 5,000 in Berlin.

Sri Lanka's international donors, the US, Japan, the European Union and Norway, on Feb. 3, called on the Tamil Tigers to surrender.

The government has accused the LTTE of bringing artillery into safe zones declared for civilians while Tamils say the army is carrying out indiscriminate shelling of the areas.

Cluster bombs were used in Mullaitivu yesterday, Gordon Weiss, a UN spokesman, said in Colombo. The hospital in the town of Puthukkudiyiruppu was evacuated after being repeatedly shelled in recent days, the International Committee of the Red Cross said in a statement yesterday.

“We do not have cluster bombs,'' Udaya Nannayakara, a defense spokesman, said by telephone from Colombo. “Our aircraft have no facility to drop cluster bombs. There were no air strikes near the hospital.''

Cluster munitions, which release dozens of “bomblets'' over a wide area, are banned under a global treaty known as the Convention on Cluster Munitions.