The Sri Lankan government officially outlawed the Tamil Tiger rebel group Wednesday, a formality that ruled out the possibility of restarting peace talks any time soon to end a brutal quarter-century of civil war.
The Cabinet unanimously agreed to ban the group after the guerrillas ignored an ultimatum to allow hundreds of thousands of civilians living in rebel-held areas to leave, Cabinet minister Maithripala Sirisena said.
The government, as well as international rights groups, have accused the Tamil Tigers of holding civilians as human shields to protect them against the military offensive into rebel-held territory. The rebels deny the accusation.
While the ban had little concrete impact _ government officials had already vowed to destroy the rebel group _ it was seen as a symbolic rejection of any possible rapprochement between the two sides.
The decision came less than a week after government forces drove the rebels from their administrative capital of Kilinochchi and forced them into a shrinking pocket of territory in the northeast roughly the size of Los Angeles.
Fighting continued throughout the area on Wednesday, with the military conducting airstrikes on Tamil Tiger targets and ground troops north of the rebel-held area pushing further southward, the military said. The military said it had recovered the bodies of five rebel fighters killed in battle.
With most communications to the north severed in the fighting, the rebels were not available for comment. Independent accounts of the fighting were not available because the government has barred journalists from the war zone.
The rebels have been fighting since 1983 to create an independent homeland for ethnic minority Tamils, who have suffered decades of marginalization by governments controlled by the Sinhalese majority.
The Tamil Tigers had long been outlawed in Sri Lanka, but the government lifted the ban in 2002 when the two sides agreed a cease-fire. But the deal collapsed amid new fighting three years ago, and the government launched an offensive aimed at destroying the group.
The decision to ban the group highlighted an oddity in Sri Lankan policy. While it was lobbying foreign governments to outlaw the rebels, the group was technically legal here. However, that was a mere technicality and anyone found materially supporting the Tamil Tigers before the ban would have been jailed.
As the government pushed ahead with its offensive, it sent teams of four to eight soldiers over the front lines into the thick northern jungles to flush the rebels from their extensive network of bunkers there, military spokesman Brig. Udaya Nanayakkara said.
The troops used small arms, though they were supported by artillery and mortar fire, he said.
The fighting was complicated by land mines and trip wires rigged to artillery shells that the rebels planted across the area, he said.
"We are suffering casualties from mortars and booby traps more than from fighting," Nanayakkara said. He did not provide details.
In other more built-up areas, the troops were fighting a more conventional battle with the rebels, he said.
Despite the rebels' rapid loss of territory, the Tamil Tigers were still managing to fire significant amounts of artillery and mortar shells at the troops, leading the military to believe they either had large stocks of ammunition or were still able to smuggle in supplies along the eastern coast, Nanayakkara said.
