COLOMBO: After a series of battlefield defeats, Sri Lanka’s Tamil Tiger rebels have lost their conventional fighting capability, but analysts say they will fight on using guerrilla tactics.

Once known as a ruthlessly efficient separatist group, the Tamil Tigers over three decades established a de facto mini-state which in recent weeks has collapsed in the face of the government’s military offensive.

Troops on Sunday stormed into Mullaittivu, the last town held by the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE), effectively ending the Tigers’ territorial claims.

“The military phase has come to an end, but the conflict will go on,” said Jayadeva Uyangoda, the head of political science at the University of Colombo.

“The Tigers may not be able to regain the political or military power that they had before, so they will return to guerrilla tactics.”

The Tigers waged a textbook guerrilla war in the 1980s, emerging from jungle hideouts to launch small-scale hit-and-run ambushes, bombings and sabotage attacks that the government found impossible to prevent.In one strike they killed 13 soldiers in a single landmine explosion.

Uyangoda said the government might now offer the Tamil community a political settlement to neutralise hard-line Tigers who had been leading the campaign for total independence – but that a guerrilla insurgency would be hard to quash.

Former Sri Lankan diplomat Nanda Godage said that the Tigers still had considerable support networks abroad that could keep funding a campaign of guerrilla warfare.

“We can expect terrorist attacks like in the early days of the conflict,” Godagae said.

Godagae said the fate of Tiger leader Velupillai Prabhakaran, 54, was key to inspiring future guerrilla fighters of the LTTE, which Prabhkaran formed in 1972 and which developed its own navy and air force.

The defence correspondent for the Lankadeepa daily, Susantha Seneviratne, warned that the remaining Tiger fighters could blend in with the civilian population in Sri Lanka’s north – and make surprise attacks on strategic targets.

Army chief Lieutenant General Sarath Fonseka said his troops had taken almost a year to cover a 40-kilometre stretch through jungle terrain to capture Mullaittivu, a base the army lost to the Tigers in 1996.

The government’s recent success has been credited to its determination – since the collapse of a truce last year – to wipe out the Tigers despite international and regional pressure to negotiate.

Tamil militant-turned-politician Dharmalingam Sithadthan said the rebels had no recruitment base after losing all urban centres to advancing troops.

The Tigers bounced back after big defeats in the 1990s to retake lost territory, but observers believe the military’s new strength and fire power would now make a comeback extremely difficult.

The government spent an estimated 1.6 billion dollars on defence last year and plans to spend even more in 2009, underlining that it expects to further strengthen its hold on areas taken from the Tigers.—AFP