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All civilians out of war zone, says Lanka

AP, Colombo
The last remaining civilians trapped by lighting In northern Sri Lanka poured across the front lines yesterday as Tamil I iger suicide bombers targeted troops in the final battles of the quarter-century civil war, the military said.
Troops on Sunday killed at least 70 rebels trying to escape the 0.4 square mile (1 -square kilometre) patch of land that government troops have surrounded, the military said However, the Tamil Tigers' top commanders remained at large. The military said the rebel leadership was likely still in the conflict zone and was planninga masssuicide.
Thousands of Sri Lankans poured into the streets Sunday morning, dancing and setting olf celebratory fireworks, after President Mahinda Rajapaksa declared victory in the country's quarter-century
civil war with the separatist rebels.
"We are celebrating a victory against terrorism," said Sujeewa Anthonis, a 32-year-old street hawker
As the fighting raged on in recent days, concerns mounted lor the fate of the tens of thousands of civilians trapped in the war zone amid heavy shelling and intense fighting.
But all 50,000 civilians fled die area over the past 72 hours, clearing the way for the government to finish off the rebels, military spokesman Brig. Udaya Nanayakkara said Sunday With journalists and aid workers barred from the war zone, it was not possible to verify the assertion.
"We re relieved to hear that all civilians have come out of the combat zone," UN spokesman Gordon Weiss said. A total of nearly 250,000 civilians have fled the fighting in recent months.
Rights groups have accused the rebels
of holding the civilians as human shields, which the rebels have denied.
The UN says 7,000 civilians were killed and ) 6,700 wounded from Jan. 20 through May 7. Health officials say more than 1,000 have been killed since then in heavy shelling that rights groups and foreign governments have blamed on Sri Lankan forces. The government denied shelling the area.
The war zone was wracked by chaos Sunday, as troops sought to mop up the final pockets of resistance, Nanayakkara said. At least one suicide bomber attacked troops in the morning, the latest in a wave of rebel attacks on the advancing forces in recent days, he said. He declined to say what damage the attack caused.
The pro-rebel Web site TamilNet, citing a doctor in the area, said the bodies of hundreds of wounded and dead people lay strewn across the battlefront.