Colombo, March 31:

The Sri Lankan government is offering would-be rebel suicide bombers nearly $100,000 and a new life abroad to surrender themselves to authorities, the government said today.

The offers have been made in posters pasted on walls around Colombo.

“Sri Lanka needs your life, your youth. Why are you throwing this away for (Tamil Tiger leader Velupillai) Prabhakaran,” read the posters, which have been pasted on ethnic Tamil neighbourhoods across the capital.

The posters show a photograph of the severed head of a bomber.

“We believe that even the suiciders are being misled. They deserve to live, not to kill themselves,” defence spokesman Keheliya Rambukwella said.

The Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam has been responsible for over 240 suicide attacks in its quarter-century fight for an independent state for minority Tamils. The poster campaign came after a wave of bombings early this year against buses, train stations and other civilian targets in Colombo and other towns far removed from the front lines of the civil war in the jungles of the north.

The military said the bombings were a sign the rebels were growing desperate in the face

of the military offensive against their de facto state in the north.

Since it began two weeks ago, the poster campaign has been cloaked in confusion. Officials initially denied the government was responsible, fuelling speculation a shadowy and well-funded pro-peace group had arisen. In recent days, military officials said they were launching an investigation into the source of the unsigned posters.

Today, they revealed they had been behind the posters all along.

“There have been a number of instances where LTTE suiciders have surrendered, so in the context of that, the possibilities are there,” he said.

Meanwhile, an outbreak of chikungunya and dengue have hit government troops taking part in the northern fighting.