World May. 20, 2009 - 05:36AM JST ( 4 )

COLOMBO —

Sri Lankan television broadcast images Tuesday of what it said was the body of Tamil Tiger leader Velupillai Prabhakaran, as the island’s president hailed his army’s victory over the rebels.

The images were shown after the Tigers claimed the guerrilla leader was still alive and well, and said they would continue fighting for a separate Tamil homeland despite President Mahinda Rajapakse’s call to unite the nation.

The video showed the upper section of a corpse which was dressed in camouflage fatigues. The back of the head, which was resting on a bloodstained newspaper, appeared to be missing.

The face was intact, with the eyes wide open, and bore a clear resemblance to the stocky, mustachioed rebel leader.

“We are a government that defeated terrorism at a time when others told us that it was not possible,” Rajapakse said in a nationally televised address to parliament.

“The writ of the state now runs across every inch of our territory.”

Under international pressure to reach out to the Tamil minority, Rajapakse vowed that a political solution to the island’s deep-rooted ethnic divisions would be found.

“All should live with equal rights. They should live without any fear or doubt,” he said. “Let us all be united.”

His speech came despite a Tiger statement insisting that Prabhakaran was not dead and that his fight—which he began in 1972—would go on.

“Our beloved leader is alive and safe. He will continue to lead the quest for dignity and freedom for the Tamil people,” the rebels’ international relations chief Selvarasa Pathmanathan said on the pro-rebel Tamilnet website.

Pathmanathan accused the government and military of “crimes against humanity,” saying senior LTTE leaders had been shot dead after being invited to negotiate a surrender.

But the army chief, General Sarath Fonseka, stated categorically that Prabhakaran’s body had been identified—a day after defense officials reported he was gunned down trying to flee government troops.

“Reports from the battlefield confirmed this morning that they have identified the body of Prabhakaran, this ruthless terrorist leader,” Fonseka said.

The conflicting accounts of the Tiger leader’s fate came after a dramatic day Monday that effectively ended one of Asia’s oldest and most brutal ethnic conflicts that claimed 70,000 lives.

The army said its commandos overran the last sliver of Tiger-held territory, killing their remaining 300 fighters and decimating the rebel leadership.

But the Sri Lankan government’s moment of triumph came at the cost of many innocent lives, according to the United Nations.

The UN and human rights groups have partly blamed indiscriminate shelling by the military for causing heavy civilian casualties, while accusing the rebels of using tens of thousands of people as a “human shield.”

The European Union on Monday called for an independent inquiry into alleged human rights violations, while the Red Cross complained it was unable to reach the wounded in the northeastern conflict zone even after victory was declared.

U.N. relief agencies also said that access to some government-run camps housing tens of thousands of displaced civilians had been restricted in recent days and demanded that the camps be “demilitarized.”

UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon said he will visit Sri Lanka on Friday to assess the situation there for himself.

“We urgently need to treat the wounds of a war that has alienated the communities in the island for almost three decades,” Ban told journalists.

The U.N. Human Rights Council said it would hold a special session May 25 to examine the situation, while governments around the world and aid agencies called on Colombo to step up relief and national reconciliation efforts.

Sri Lankan authorities have repeatedly bridled at what they see as outside interference in their internal affairs, and Rajapakse made it clear Tuesday where he felt foreign efforts should be focused.

“What we need from the international community is not advice, but material help to carry out our reconstruction effort,” he said.

Wire reports