Sri Lankan government forces captured the rebel Tamil Tigers’ political capital of Kilinochchi yesterday in a victory that could hasten the end of the country’s 25-year civil war.

In a televised address, President Rajapaksa called the fall of the town “an unparalleled victory” in a conflict that has claimed more than 70,000 lives. He offered the Tigers what he said was a last chance to surrender.

The capture of the rebel base, the culmination of months of fighting, marked a stunning propaganda victory for the Government and could mark the beginning of the end of Asia’s longest-running civil war, analysts said. The defeat is the most serious for the rebels since they lost control of the northern Jaffna peninsula in 1995. The Government claimed that the Tigers were confined to a small stretch of jungle in the district of Mullaitivu in the northeast.

Hours after the announcement that Kilinochchi had been taken, a suspected Tiger suicide bomber killed at least two people outside an air force base in Colombo. It was the second terrorist attack on the capital in less than a week.

Most analysts believe that a political agreement will be necessary to forge a lasting peace as the rebels turn to the guerrilla tactics that have enabled them to rebound from previous serious setbacks. Paikiasothy Saravanamuttu, of the Centre for Policy Alternatives in Colombo, toldThe Times: “The capture of Kilinochchi is a military victory with potentially very significant political consequences – but the key word is potentially. Militarily, the balance of power has shifted dramatically to the Government, but [the Tigers] are not about to vanish.” There was no comment from the Tigers yesterday.

Kilinochchi, a lowlying town about 200 miles (320km) north of Colombo, was the administrative centre of the parallel state that the rebels had fought to establish in the north to protect Sri Lanka’s Tamil minority from a Government dominated by the ethnic Sinhalese majority.

The site, that until recently housed offices for international organisations such as the United Nations, became a symbol of the Tigers’ separatist aspirations and was the hub of an administration that ran its own police force, courts and prisons, and collected its own taxes. Government forces gained control once before, in 1996. The Tigers recaptured it in 1998.

Yesterday street celebrations were held in Colombo. A defence ministry spokesman said: “There are no options available [to the Tigers] other than to flee to the jungle.”

In recent days government troops, supported by helicopter gunships and fighter jets, had overrun rebel strongholds in clashes that left hundreds dead and wounded. Having effectively been under siege for months, Kilinochchi is thought to have almost become a ghost town after most of its inhabitants fled. Accurate casualty numbers are unobtainable because of a ban on the media entering the conflict zone.

President Rajapaksa, whose Government faces provincial elections next month, had pledged to crush the rebels militarily before the end of last year. Yesterday he said that the fall of Kilinochchi marked “a decisive victory over savage terrorism”.

Civil rights activists believe that the Government’s military successes have come at an unacceptable human cost. An estimated 250,000 civilians were forced to flee their homes as the Army advanced.

The increase of the conflict last year drew a wave of criticism over an alleged surge in extortion, abductions and extrajudicial killings in army-held areas, with pro-government militias usually blamed.

The Army began its attack on the north last year after the Government formally scrapped a 2002 Norwegian-brokered truce in January. It claimed that the Tigers, who have been classified as a terrorist organisation by the EU and US, had used peace talks to consolidate their forces.

President Rajapaksa promised in his new year address that 2009 would see a final “heroic victory” over the rebels.

His forces, which are severely stretched, will be painfully aware that in the past the Tigers, who pioneered the use of suicide bombers, have been at their most dangerous after enduring some of the worst defeats.

In 1987 the rebels created the Black Tigers, a unit responsible for conducting suicide attacks that analysts fear will now step up operations. In November the Tigers’ leader, Velupillai Prabhakaran, who remains free, suggested that the rebels would revert to terrorism. “No sane voice is being raised to abandon war or to seek a peaceful resolution to the conflict,” he said.

The years of death

— The Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) – known as the Tamil Tigers – were formed in 1972 in protest against the Sinhalese Government. Their aim is to secure a separate state in the north and east of the country

— About 70,000 people have been killed and tens of thousands have been displaced in suicide bombings and military skirmishes

— In 2002 the Norwegian Government brokered a six-year ceasefire agreement. Despite this, fighting increased after the hardline President Rajapaksa was elected in 2005. The Government pulled out of the agreement last year after a series of suicide bombings

— Kilinochchi was the rebels’ administrative headquarters. Although its capture represents a significant victory, land has been ceded and lost in the past, and its occupation will not prevent the LTTE from attempting suicide attacks

Sources: Times archives, bbc.co.uk

Times Recommends

• Should Knox’s trial even have reached the courtroom?
• 'Was it real?' The US bailout nightmare
• Iranian opposition plays the long game