The Tamils have long felt the government, dominated by the Sinhalese, has discriminated against them, their culture and their language.

Rajapaksa has said he would seek a political resolution to the ethnic conflict once the rebels were destroyed. But Sinhalese nationalist politicians have already said that with victory in sight there was no need for the sort of power-sharing arrangement seen as crucial to placating the Tamils and preventing a new outbreak of violence.

By some estimates, the retreating rebels still have as many as 10,000 hardcore cadres and another 10,000 reservists still ready to fight.

Iqbal Athas, a military analyst for Jane's Defense Weekly, cautions against declaring an early victory. ``The war is not yet over,'' he said. ``It could be protracted.''

Some of the insurgents could take off their uniforms, blend in with the mass of civilians still living in their stronghold and fight on as guerrillas, said Austin Fernando, a former defense secretary.

The war that led to the murder of a former Indian prime minister erupted in 1983 after a rebel ambush in the northern Tamil city of Jaffna killed 13 soldiers. Vengeful Sinhalese mobs rampaged through Colombo, the capital 190 miles to the south, leaving more than 2,000 Tamils dead, according to human rights groups.

The army of about 40,000 was unprepared for the brutal fighting that ensued, said Wanasinghe.

``Our army was mainly for containing internal unrest. It was not trained for war,'' the ex-military chief said.

It soon realized that the rebels, with their rocket-propelled grenades and makeshift armored tractors, were better armed than the troops, he said. The air force was reduced to bombing the rebels with barrels of explosives rolled out the doors of transport planes, he said.

Over time, the violence would spike and ebb. India, with its own sympathetic Tamil community, sent in peacekeepers in 1987, but they soon became targets of the rebels and left in 1990. The following year, Rajiv Gandhi, who as Indian prime minister had ordered in the peacekeepers, was killed by a Tamil Tiger female suicide bomber in southern India.

Hoping to limit casualties and the mounting expense of the war, Sri Lankan governments vacillated between fighting and seeking peace, with different officials in the same government often working at cross purposes, said Fernando. And while the military did its best to get new equipment and modernize buying fighter jets and attack boats it never was properly funded, he said.

Norwegian mediators brokered a cease-fire in 2002. But in 2005 Rajapaksa was elected president and after a brief stab at peace talks, he committed himself to all-out war. A year ago, he withdrew from the cease-fire.

A recruitment drive expanded troop levels by 40 percent, Defense Secretary Gotabhaya Rajapaksa said, and the defense budget hit a record $1.6 billion.

In previous administrations ``the soldiers were getting mixed signals,'' said Rajapaksa, who is the president's brother. ``Here there was no ambiguity in the aim. It was very clear: destroy the LTTE. That was clear from the first day to the last day.''

``We had a plan. We knew what strength we needed. We knew what equipment we needed ... We gave those to the commanders so the commanders had greater flexibility.''

The government ignored international pressure to restart peace efforts and shrugged off accusations from human rights groups that it sanctioned extrajudicial killings, allowed paramilitaries to run amok and disregarded the safety of civilians.

Rights groups also accused the rebels listed as a terror group by the U.S. and European Union of forcibly conscripting child soldiers and holding the civilian population under their control hostage.

The government barred independent media from the war zone and underreported its casualties, allowing it to suffer huge casualties without losing public support for the war, said several diplomats, who spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak to the media.

As the war neared its apex last year, the government forced aid workers the last independent witnesses out of rebel-held areas.

Rebel leader Velupillai Prabhakaran had transformed the organization from little more than a street gang in the 1970s into a fearsome guerrilla group that ran a dictatorial regime that ruled a wide swath of the north, with its own police, courts and customs department.

The rebels dug in effectively, deployed heavy artillery, established a significant naval wing and a rudimentary air force that once bombed Colombo's international airport. It raised up to $300 million a year from a network of fake charities and international smuggling of arms, drugs and possibly even people, according to Jane's Intelligence Review.

At the same time, Prabhakaran molded a suicide cult blamed for more than 240 attacks.

He managed to parry many of the government's battlefield successes. When government forces captured the city of Jaffna in 1995, the rebels the following year overran an army base in Mullaittivu, 60 miles away, killing 1,200 troops.

But Prabhakaran was making costly errors, analysts said.

Gandhi's assassination alienated Prabhakaran's strongest allies in India.

During negotiations that followed the 2002 cease-fire, he rejected a deal that would have given the rebels broad autonomy over the north and east but not full independence, according to a diplomat with knowledge of the offer. It was widely seen as the best deal he could ever get.

In 2004, a top commander known as Col. Karuna ran afoul of the Tiger leadership and defected to the government side with thousands of his fighters.

Prabhakaran then called a Tamil boycott of the 2005 presidential election, which helped propel the hard-line Rajapaksa to victory.

After new peace talks failed, the rebels cut off the water supply to more than 60,000 people in the east, provoking the latest government offensive.

With Karuna helping the government, the military was able to capture the east in July 2007. Then it turned its attention to the north and forced the rebels into a broad retreat.

Now the rebels are huddled in the northeastern jungles along with hundreds of thousands of civilians, many of them war refugees living in makeshift shelters.

Military officials believe Prabhakaran is hiding there, protected by hundreds of fighters and an inner security ring of up to 30 Black Tigers, the rebels' suicide commandos. He, like many of his fighters, is said to wear a cyanide vial around his neck to kill himself if captured.

Capturing or killing him could plunge the rebels into disarray. But Jehan Perera, a Sri Lankan political analyst, says much more will be needed before Sri Lanka - is fully at peace.

``Ultimately, this is a conflict between the two largest communities that live on this island and that is not resolved,'' he said.Discuss this story Published: Sat Jan 10 19:11:55 EST 2009

They said seven people, including a child, were killed when a group of 56 men, women and children attempted to leave rebel-held territory.

''They were moving towards our frontline at Paranthan (a recently taken by the army) when they were shot at. Of them, 49, including two men with gunshot injuries, were able to enter the army controlled area,'' a spokesman said.

He said details of the fatalities were obtained from survivors.

The spokesman added that he expects more people to attempt to flee rebel-held areas as two divisions of the army advance toward the last rebel-held bastion, Mullaitivu, on the northeastern coast.

The government has repeatedly accused the LTTE of using civilians as human shields in the battlefield and forcibly preventing villagers who want to quit the war zone from leaving.

A defense analyst writing to a popular Colombo newspaper said Saturday the war is rapidly coming to an end with LTTE defenses in northeast expected to collapse before provincial elections in February.

The government, struggling on the economic front and unpopular over rising prices, has been campaigning on the battlefield successes of the past several days.Discuss this story Published: Sat Jan 10 07:16:30 EST 2009