Liberation Tigers Of Tamil Elam

Sri Lanka's victory this week after a 25-year battle against the Tamil Tiger rebels represents a rare success story for governments fighting insurgencies. Even as leaders in Colombo, the capital, declared a national holiday and citizens danced in the streets, military planners and analysts around the world began scrutinizing the war for lessons on how to fight Al Qaeda, the Taliban and other militant groups.

The United Nations said today that cluster bombs had hit the last functioning hospital in Sri Lanka's northern war zone and that 52 civilians had been killed in the region in the previous 24 hours. On Tuesday, the United States, European Union, Japan and Norway urged the Tamil Tiger rebels to consider surrendering to avoid more deaths. It was the first time cluster bombs were known to have been used in the government's push to defeat the rebels since the collapse of a cease-fire in 2006.

A suicide bomber killed 14 people at an opening ceremony for a marathon Sunday, including a government minister and a former Olympian. More than 90 others were wounded. Sri Lankan officials blamed the bombing on the Tamil Tigers, rebels who have fought since 1983 for an independent homeland for the ethnic minority Tamils, who believe they have been marginalized for decades by successive governments run by ethnic majority Sinhalese.

Sri Lankan soldiers routed ethnic Tamil rebels from a key town after weeks of heavy fighting, the military said, and thousands of Tamil civilians fled their homes because of the battles. Military spokesman Brig. Prasad Samarasinghe said the army "gained complete control over Vaharai," an impoverished coastal town in eastern Batticaloa district. The rebel Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam said in an e-mail that they "decided to pull back" from the area.

The military thwarted a suicide attack by Tamil Tiger rebels on the capital's port when it destroyed three suspicious boats offshore, officials said. The three suspected rebel boats had entered a "high security zone" near Colombo's port -- a vital lifeline for the island country -- where unauthorized vessels are not allowed, a Defense Ministry official said. The boats did not heed an order to stop, forcing the navy and air force to sink them, the official said.

The Italian, German and U.S. ambassadors to Sri Lanka were slightly injured when Tamil Tiger rebels shelled a delegation led by the island's human rights minister, the military said. The group's helicopters had just landed when the attack occurred. Italian Ambassador Pio Mariani and German envoy Jurgen Weerth were treated at a hospital in the eastern district of Batticaloa. U.S. Ambassador Robert Blake's arm was grazed by shrapnel or a stone, but he was not taken to a hospital.

Tamil Tiger rebels used at least one small propeller plane to bomb a Sri Lankan air force base outside the capital, Colombo, in the separatists' first airstrike in their quarter-century fight against the government. Three airmen were killed. The attack had limited military significance, leaving aircraft on the ground unscathed.

Tamil Tiger rebels bombed a fuel refinery and gasoline storage facility Sunday near the Sri Lankan capital, and authorities cut power to the city, officials said. Hours later, the military pounded rebel positions in the north. The predawn rebel attack was the third aerial assault by the Tamil Tigers. Last month, the separatist group carried out its first airstrike, bombing an air force base near Colombo and killing at least three airmen.

Hundreds of ethnic Tamils have been rounded up and forced from Sri Lanka's capital in what officials called a security precaution amid rising hostilities with Tamil Tiger rebels. Human rights advocates derided the move as "ethnic cleansing." The more than 300 Tamils expelled from Colombo this week were sent to the Tamil-dominated north and east, areas that have been beset by bloodshed for most of the last year as an ethnic war raged.

The nation's highest court ordered police to stop expelling ethnic Tamils from the capital. The Defense Ministry says 376 people were rounded up this week in Colombo and sent to Tamil areas in the north and east as a security precaution. More than a quarter of the capital's 800,000 people are Tamils. Tamil rebels began fighting the Sinhalese-dominated government in 1983 for the creation of a separate homeland.