More than 150,000 civilians are trapped in a rapidly shrinking jungle battlefield as Sri Lanka hopes to crush a 25-year-old separatist movement, and a top U.N. official said Jan. 26 their lives are in serious danger.

The civilians in the last scrap of rebel-controlled territory are in the crossfire between tens of thousands of advancing government troops fresh from capturing the Tamil Tigers' last stronghold Jan. 25 and an unknown number of rebels who are so committed to their cause that some wear suicide vials of cyanide around their necks in case of capture.

The Tamil Tigers have fought since 1983 to create a separate state for minority Tamils, who have suffered decades of marginalization at the hands of governments controlled by the Sinhalese majority. More than 70,000 people have been killed in the civil war.