Sri Lanka waiting to storm 'safe zone'

COLOMBO, Sri Lanka, April 6 (UPI) -- Sri Lankan President Mahinda Rajapaksa has called on the besieged Tamil Tigers to surrender.

"You have no option but to put down your arms and surrender with your brainwashed remaining cadres. It is now time for you to release all Tamil civilians and let them live in peace and harmony," Colombo Page reported the president as saying Sunday at a political gathering attended by about 2,500 supporters of the United National and Sri Lanka Freedom parties.

There was no reported response from rebel leader Velupillai Prabhakaran.

Colombo Page said three days of fighting between government troops and the Tamil Tigers had left 420 rebels dead. The army reportedly had taken the last rebel stronghold at Puthukkudiyiruppu and had cornered the Tigers in a no-fire zone.

The newspaper said another 2,127 civilians had fled the zone in search of government protection by Monday.

Sri Lankan military leaders say they were in no hurry to storm the civilian safe zone being used as a refuge by the rebels, the BBC reported Monday.

"We have no plans of going into the safe zone immediately," Sri Lankan Defense Secretary Gotabhaya Rajapakse told the British broadcaster. "Our aim is to get the civilians safely out of the no-fire zone so we are watching at the moment."

More than 60,000 civilians have fled to government-run relief centers in recent days, the BBC said.