![\"'Joke':](\"https:\/\/c.ndtvimg.com\/prabhakaran-650_625x300_1527421456211.jpg\"\/ "\\"'Joke':")
<\/div>\nSri Lanka’s defence ministry dismissed the claim about Prabhakaran still being alive. (File)<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
Colombo: <\/b><\/p>\n
Sri Lanka on Monday dismissed as a “joke” a top Tamil nationalist leader’s claim that LTTE chief Velupillai Prabhakaran, who was killed in 2009 by the island nation’s military, was still alive.<\/p>\n
Pazha Nedumaran, a noted nationalist leader in Tamil Nadu, told reporters in Thanjavur that the leader of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) “is doing well” and a “conducive atmosphere prevails for him to appear now.”<\/p>\n
Sri Lanka’s defence ministry dismissed Mr Nedumaran’s claim as a joke.<\/p>\n
“It is confirmed that he was killed on 19 May 2009. The DNA has proved it,\u201d Colonel Nalin Herath, Sri Lanka’s defence ministry spokesman told PTI.<\/p>\n
In a bitterly fought campaign that began in 1983, Sri Lanka’s military ended the nearly three-decade brutal civil war in the island nation in May 2009, by killing the leaders of the LTTE.<\/p>\n
The LTTE was fighting for an independent state for the Tamilians in Sri Lanka’s North and Eastern provinces.<\/p>\n
Though the exact date when Prabhakaran was killed by the Sri Lankan Army was not known, his death was announced on May 19, 2009.<\/p>\n
The then-president Mahinda Rajapaksa on May 18, 2009 declared the end of a 26-year war in which over 1,00,000 people were killed and millions of Sri Lankans, mainly minority Tamils were displaced as refugees inside the country and abroad.<\/p>\n
(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)<\/i><\/p>\n
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