The Tamil Tigers’ political chief and number two in command was killed yesterday in an air force raid, dashing hopes for a quick end to the resurgent conflict in Sri Lanka.

S. P. Thamilselvan, 40, was the international face of the rebels, who are fighting for a Tamil homeland in the northeast, and was their main negotiator at the last round of peace talks in Geneva in October last year.

He had taken part in almost every round of talks since 1994.

The rebels said in a statement that he was killed with five other Tiger leaders in an air raid on their territory at about 6am local time.

Rebel and army spokesmen confirmed the deaths.

“Head of our organisation’s political division, Brigadier S. P. Thamilselvan, was killed by the Sri Lankan Air Force aerial bombing,” said the statement.

Brigadier Thamilselvan – always smiling and carrying a polished walking stick – was regarded as the Tigers’ de facto prime minister and second only to the group’s secretive leader, Velupillai Prabhakaran, who has not been seen in public for years.

His death was seen as an important victory for government forces, whose conflict with the Tigers has claimed more than 5,000 lives since a 2002 peace deal unravelled early last year. It came the week after the armed forces were humiliated by a daring Tiger attack on the Anuradhapura air base, which killed 14 soldiers and destroyed eight spy planes. However, analysts said that Brigadier Thamilselvan’s death had further clouded the prospects for talks to end a conflict that has killed more than 70,000 people since it began in 1983. The Tigers, who launched their campaign to protect the ethnic Tamil minority from discrimination by the Sinhalese majority, usually retaliate for such military setbacks with suicide bombings.

The Government is now widely rumoured to be preparing to begin an offensive to capture the north and crush the rebels after successfully dislodging them from territory in the east this year.

Critics say that there can be no military solution to the conflict and have raised concerns about escalating human rights abuses and extrajudicial killings on both sides.

Gotabaya Rajapaksa, the Defence Minister and brother of the President of Sri Lanka, Mahinda Rajapakse, welcomed the news of Brigadier Thamilselvan’s death and pledged to kill the remaining Tiger leaders one by one.

“This is just a message, that we know where their leaders are,” he said. “I know the locations of all the leaders, that if we want we can take them one by one, so they must change their hideouts.”

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