Nursing a war wound, he walked with a stick and was also the group's chief peace negotiator.

He died with five colleagues during a Sri Lankan air force bombardment of Kilinochchi on Friday morning.

Born in the northern town of Chavakacheri in the Jaffna peninsula, Thamilselvan joined the LTTE in 1984 and was later sent to India for military training, according to the pro-rebel Puthinam.com website.

He was once on the personal staff of elusive LTTE leader Vellupillai Prabhakaran and was also an active combatant who lead attacks against Sri Lankan troops.

Thamilselvan was wounded in 1993 while leading an offensive on an army camp and also survived a 2002 bombing said to have been carried out by Sri Lankan security forces.

He acted as a de facto prime minister for the LTTE and was the public face for the guerrillas' meetings with diplomats, international donors, aid workers and journalists who visited Kilinochchi.

The government last year banned foreign diplomats and visiting dignitaries from calling on him, saying that the rebels were using the meetings for propaganda.

Thamilselvan, who would speak through an English translator, rose to prominence in the international arena during the Norwegian-brokered peace talks with the Sri Lankan government.

He had been an understudy of former chief negotiator Anton Balasingham -- the key contact for Norwegian peacebrokers -- who died of cancer at his home in London in 2006.

The political chief also led a peace team to negotiations with the Sri Lankan government that were hosted by Switzerland last year. But they ended in failure and led to more bloodshed.

Well before Al-Qaeda attained notoriety, the Tamil Tigers had successfully employed suicide attacks against the Sri Lankan military, a tactic Thamilselvan said was adopted to inflict maximum damage on the military's heavy firepower with minimum loss of Tiger lives.

"It is not suicide," he said, explaining that the LTTE call the act "self-gift" in Tamil, giving up oneself for the national good.

"It is always wrong to place us on a par with international terrorist acts that bring harm to innocent civilians or targets that are not military," he said during an interview with AFP last May.

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