'Prabhakaran's wife, son fled to Tamil Nadu last year'

"When intelligence agents interrogated a close aide of Prabhakaran, he had said that, last year, Prabhakaran's wife (Mathivathani) and younger son (13-year-old) Balachandran had escaped by boat to Tamil Nadu, where they were to meet with an LTTE cadre who was to arrange for them to fly to Singapore, from there to an unknown destination," the 'Bottomline' newspaper reported.

The newspaper did not reveal the name of Prabhakaran's aide in its report while noting that there were rumours that the LTTE chief's wife, younger son and daughter Duwarka too had been killed during the final battles.

However, an officer from the battlefront said they had not recovered any bodies of children, it said.

"Prabhakaran's daughter, Duwarka, who was said to be studying in Ireland, during the height of the final battle, hadn't returned to Sri Lanka, but had been in touch with her father via phone," it said quoting "a credible source" from Norway.

"She (Prabhakaran's daughter) had arrived in Oslo as instructed by her father, as there were many to take care of her there," the Bottomline said.

The slain Tiger supremo's wife and daughter were earlier believed to have fled to Europe as the conflict intensified in Sri Lanka's north.

Sri Lankan army has neither found their bodies nor mentioned much about them.

The whereabouts of Prabhakaran's teenage son Balachandran were also not known while LTTE chief's elder son Charles Anthony was killed and his body found in the No Fire Zone.

According to Karuna Amman, a former top commander of Prabhakaran and now a Federal Minister, a spokesman for LTTE's International Relations head S Pathmanathan had told him that Tiger supremo's wife and daughter were dead.

"But I cannot confirm this personally... If they (Prabhakaran's family) were in the No Fire Zone, they could not have escaped," Karuna said in Vavuniya yesterday