After the announcement was made over the clandestine Voice of Tigers radio station and the International Broadcasting Corporation (IBC), a UK-based Tamil radio that can be heard in north-eastern Sri Lanka, life began limping back to normalcy in Vavuniya town.

With the LTTE announcement, a week long of uncertainty and misery ended for nearly 100,000 people, many of whom were camping on the outskirts of the town without proper shelter or food.

The area's chief civilian administrator K Ganesh said: "The people have started coming back." He went on to add that banks and government offices had been functioning since Monday, and he expected all shops and businesses to reopen today after the LTTE announcement. With this, the Lankan government's fear of an imminent attack by the LTTE on Vavuniya, has also lessened.

Vavuniya is the largest garrison town innorthern Sri Lanka and the command centre for military operations in the region.

But with typical psychological acumen, the LTTE managed to retain the upper hand by asking people to avoid areas around the military camps in Vavuniya. The announcement also thanked the people for undergoing hardships for the LTTE. Earlier this month, the LTTE inflicted a string of humiliating defeats on the Sri Lankan army, capturing 10 military bases and about 30 kms of road just north of Vavuniya. Analysts said the LTTE's decision not to attack Vavuniya was tactical, based on the calculation that its fighting force, far smaller in strength than the army's, would get severely over-stretched in any such operation. Vavuniya has a larger area than the little towns that the LTTE wrested from army control two weeks ago. It is also much better guarded.

"Even if they had captured Vavuniya from an army that was demoralised by its recent reversals, they would not have been able to hold on to it without sooner or later suffering thesame fate as the army," argued Jehan Perera of the National Peace Council, writing in the daily Island.