Lankan troops enter last rebel-held town

Sri Lankan forces entered the last northern town under rebel control Tuesday, the military said, as the government brushed aside international calls for a cease-fire to allow tens of thousands of civilians to escape the war zone.
In recent months, the military has driven the Tamil Tigers out of their major strongholds in the north and confined them to a small patch of coastal land along the northeast. The government has vowed to destroy the rebels and end the 25-year-old civil war plaguing this island nation.
After breaching rebel defences, troops entered Puthukkudiyiruppu on Tuesday and were fighting house-to-house battles with small groups of rebels on the outskirts of the town, military spokesman Brig. Udaya Nanayakkara said.
"They are resisting and retreating," Nanyakkara said of the rebel fighters.
The town's capture would be another devastating blow to the already reeling rebels and their dreams of creating an independent state in the north and east. The guerrillas, who controlled a wide swath of the north less than a year ago, would be left with little more than a handful of villages and a small strip of coast.
Aid groups estimate as many as 200,000 civilians are trapped in the shrinking rebel area and international officials have expressed concern for the escalating civilian casualties.
Human Rights Watch said last week 2,000 civilians have been killed in recent months and accused both sides of committing war crimes.
UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon called Monday for a halt to the fighting to allow the civilians to flee and for political talks to urgently end the conflict that has cost 70,000 lives since 1983.
"There is an urgent need to bring this conflict to an end without any further unnecessary loss of civilian life and destruction of Sri Lankan society," Ban said.
The government said Tuesday it had no plans to stop its offensive against the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam. "The LTTE must lay down its weapons and that will automatically guarantee a cease-fire," Foreign Secretary Palitha Kohona said.
In a letter to the United Nations on Monday, the rebels also appealed for a cease-fire but said they would not lay down its weapons.
The EU also has called for an immediate halt to fighting and says the government must stop its human rights abuses.
The rebels have been fighting for an independent state for the Tamil minority after decades of marginalisation by governments dominated by the Sinhalese majority.
Meanwhile, Sri Lanka's military said Tuesday it was trying to establish how the Tamil Tigers managed to buy light planes abroad, smuggle them onto the island and establish a rebel air force.
The probe follows the latest Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) air assault against the capital using two of their Czech-made aircraft.
The military shot down one aircraft just before it reached the intended target at the main airbase, while the second plane crashed into a tax building here on Friday night and exploded in a ball of fire.
"At this stage we do not know the exact origin of the planes except that they had been manufactured in the Czech Republic," Sri Lankan Air Force spokesman Janaka Nanayakkara said.