COLOMBO, Sri Lanka, Feb. 4 -- Sri Lankan President Mahinda Rajapaksa proclaimed in an Independence Day message on Wednesday that the rebel Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam would be "completely defeated in a few days," potentially signaling an end to a 25-year insurgency that is one of the world's longest ongoing conflicts.

The rebel's last holdouts are penned into a small zone in the north of the island nation, and reports from the war zone indicate that they are close to being overrun amid fierce fighting with government forces. Civilian casualties have been significant: United Nations officials said that 52 civilians were killed in the past day, and that cluster bombs had struck a hospital.

But Rajapaksa used Sri Lanka's national day to emphasize that the end of fighting might be near. Government forces have taken over major rebel-held areas and cornered the Tamil Tigers in a 120-square-mile stretch of coastal land -- though analysts say guerrilla fighting might persist for months. International diplomats have begun urging the government to turn its focus from conflict to crafting a truce agreement with the rebels, increasing humanitarian help for those caught in the war zone and negotiating a long-term agreement with the country's Tamil minority.

"For nearly three decades, we were forced to celebrate independence with an illegal armed group operating in our country," said Rajapaksa, who spoke from a heavily secured beachfront stage, guarded by tanks and navy ships, as 4,200 decorated service members marched in a military parade. "We have now been able, within a short period of 2 1/2 years, to completely defeat the cowardly forces of terror."

He also appeared to reach out to hundreds of thousands of minority ethnic Tamils who have sought political asylum in the West.

"At this moment I urge all Sri Lankans from all communities who fled the country because of the war to return to their motherland," Rajapaksa said.

Rajapaksa's address came alongside U.N. reports that cluster bombs had hit the north's largest functioning hospital. Fifteen U.N. staffers and 81 family members are trapped in the Puthukkudiyiruppu area, where the hospital was hit, U.N. spokesman Gordon Weiss said.

"We hold the gravest fears for the safety of our staff and their families," Weiss told reporters. The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) reported that the hospital has been hit five times in the past few days, including a strike on the pediatric ward, leaving at least 12 civilians dead and 30 wounded.

After a harrowing night of intense shelling, the patients and medical staff have been evacuated, said Sarasi Wijeratne, an ICRC information officer in the country's capital of Colombo.

"The patients are out after shelling continued into the morning and hit the operating theater. Some patients were running out of the hospital because they were scared," Wijeratne said. "Now we are requesting that the patients be allowed to be moved so there can be treatment and care for the sick and wounded."

It was not clear who launched the cluster bombs, which spray dozens of "bomblets," and are banned under the international Convention on Cluster Munitions. Sri Lanka's military spokesman, Brig. Udaya Nanayakkara, said that the government wasn't to blame.

"The U.N. is going all over the media saying there were cluster bombs. We know those aren't ours," he said. "They are banned under international laws. We have been fighting this whole time and never used them. The Tigers may have gotten them through their sources.

"We know the exact location of the hospital. We just don't fire indiscriminately," he said in an interview, with a heavily marked map of the tear-dropped shaped island behind him. He blamed the rebels, saying they were using Tamils as human shields.

Representatives of the rebel group have not been available for comment.

The attacks on the hospital have become a symbol of the human cost of ending the 25-year civil war between the Tamil rebels and the largely Sinhalese government. An estimated 70,000 people have died in the conflict. Aid agencies and the U.N. say there are about 250,000 civilians trapped along with the Tamil rebels, who have been fighting to create a separate Tamil homeland in the country's northern and eastern provinces. The government disputes the figure, saying it is far lower.

Aid workers' reports of casualties are impossible to verify independently because the government has banned journalists from going there, except on several recent carefully guided tours. During a surge in fighting in recent months, the Tigers had been driven from their longtime strongholds and de facto separate state centered around the northern regions of Kilinochchi, Elephant Pass and Mullaitivu. They now control a jungle area of less than 120 square miles along the Indian Ocean island's northeastern coast. Fighting has been concentrated in a much smaller area of around 30 square miles, according to the Sri Lankan military.

In the first international acknowledgement that the rebels might be near to defeat, the United States, Japan, the European Union and Norway -- Sri Lanka's international quartet of top donors -- said the Tigers and the government "should recognize that further loss of life, of civilians and combatants, will serve no cause."

Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton and U.K. Foreign Secretary David Miliband also issued a statement pushing for a truce so that humanitarian aid could be allowed in. Long term, they called for a political solution to the issue of Tamil separatism. The United States has labeled the Tamil Tigers, who are known for their early use of suicide bombers, as a terrorist group.

In the seaside capital, there was hope that the war would finally be over, but also worries that new tensions would surface. More than 10,000 police officers guarded the city to mark the country's independence from colonial power. Throughout the morning, roads were closed and families stayed home watching the parade and patriotic television footage, which showed Sri Lankan troops giving out water to suffering civilians and carrying the wounded out of monsoon-drenched rural fields.

Bright yellow national flags, showing a roaring lion, were perched atop Buddhist and Hindu temples, homes, on rattling rickshaw taxis and above shacks selling bananas and mangos. Amid a stage festooned with balloons and a buffet dinner, an updated national theme song was released with lyrics stressing a united country.

But no songs of victory should be sung yet, some peace activists and governance experts warned. The Sri Lankan government might win the war, but the country could ultimately lose if relations between the Tamil civilians are not improved.

"They will snatch a political defeat out of the jaws of military victory," said Paikiasothy Saravanamuttu, executive director of the Colombo-based Center for Policy Alternatives. "Civilians have been killed and continue to be killed. If you are going to win hearts and minds, you have to continue to reconcile."

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