A body believed to be that of Tamil Tiger founder leader Vellupillai Prabhakaran has been found but the identity of the corpse has not been confirmed, Sri Lankan military sources said Sunday. “They are taking the body for checks to confirm it is the real Prabhakaran,” one military official told Reuters on conditions of anonymity. Four other military sources confirmed the recovery and said identity checks were under way. The rumors surfaced as Tamil Tiger rebels said they would put down their weapons after a 37-year battle for an independent ethnic homeland, with their last remaining fighters encircled in the jungle. In what could mark the end of Asia's longest running civil war -- one that left more than 70,000 dead in pitched battles, suicide attacks, bomb strikes and assassinations -- the rebels appeared to finally admit defeat. There have been no confirmed sightings of Prabhakarn for months, even by senior rebel figures or their family members captured by the army in recent fighting. Defense sources say that on Friday night a huge fireball erupted in the jungle where the once formidable Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) have been making their last stand. One theory doing the rounds in Colombo is that Prabhakaran blew himself up along with his top lieutenants – ensuring his body would never be found. But Prabhakaran may also be alive, either hiding or having fled overseas. Last week, troops said they found a “metal home” built out of iron stripped off a beached container ship and adapted to be submerged underwater off the coast as a survival capsule. The military's advance into rebel territory has also uncovered a basic submarine and an underground multi-storey bunker complete with air conditioning. A more mundane possibility is that he escaped by a speedboat earlier this year and remains at sea after transferring to a bigger vessel. He may also have fled to nearby India, where in Tamil Nadu state some politicians openly support the LTTE. Other places cited as possible destinations for his escape are the small fishing communities along the coasts of Thailand and Malaysia, where police have been put on alert on several occasions in the past few months. Sri Lanka said on Sunday that troops had yet to find any trace of Prabhakaran as they moved in to finish off the Tigers. Defence officials have said Prabhakaran's “ruthless megalomania” included the use of two body doubles -- meaning that formal identification may be difficult. According to the Tigers' co-founder Dharmalingam Sithadthan – now a mainstream politician who lives in Colombo – the war will not be over until Prabhakaran is captured or confirmed dead.
