New Delhi  - India on Monday said it would work with the Sri Lanka government to provide relief and quick rehabiliation to displaced Tamils as the island nation announced the end of the armed resistance by Tamil Tiger rebels and the death of their leader Velupillai Prabhakaran.

The plight of Sri Lankan Tamils is an emotive issue in India's southern Tamil Nadu state which has a large population of ethnic Tamils and authorities tightened security across the region, specially in state capital Chennai.

India's External Affairs Minister Pranab Mukherjee had a telephone conversation with Sri Lanka President Mahinda Rajapakse who confirmed that armed resistance by the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) had ended and that Prabhakaran was dead, a ministry release said.

"India will work with the people and government of Sri Lanka to provide relief to those affected by the tragic conflict, and to rapidly rehabilitate all those who have been displaced, bringing their lives to normalcy as soon as possible," Vishnu Prakash, official spokesperson for the External Affairs Ministry said in a statement.

India also felt that with an end to the conflict, it was time to address its root causes, Prakash said.

"This would include political steps towards the effective devolution of power within the Sri Lankan Constitution so that Sri Lankans of all communities, including the Tamils, can feel at home and lead lives of dignity of their own free will," he said.

India has a significant population of over 60 million Tamils, most of whom reside in Tamil Nadu which is separated from northern Sri Lanka by a narrow stretch of sea.

The cause of Tamil Eelam, or a separate homeland for Tamils in Sri Lanka, has aroused passions in Tamil Nadu in the past and chief minister like the late MG Ramachandran were known to be soft on Prabhakaran.

However, the organization was banned in India after the assassination of former prime minister and Congress Party leader Rajiv Gandhi by an LTTE suicide bomber during an election rally on May 21, 1991.

Prabhakaran, who is believed to have hatched the plot to assassinate Gandhi along with his intelligence chief Pottu Amman admitted in an interview 11 years after the incident that it was a tragic incident, PTI news agency reported. The interview was put up on the LTTE's website.

The assassination attempt came a year after the Indian Peace Keeping Force left the Sri Lankan shores after fighting the LTTE for nearly three years.

Prabhakaran and Amman were found guilty in the Rajiv Gandhi assassination case and have been sentenced to death in absentia.

Late Anton Balasingham, the LTTE's political ideologue, had on one occasion described Gandhi's killing as a "a monumental historical tragedy" and called upon the Indian government to be magnanimous, to put the past behind and approach the Tamil question in a different perspective.

Indian intelligence and Tamil Nadu state leaders are believed to have provided covert support to the LTTE in its early days.

Indian security agencies sounded an alert in the coastal areas in Tamil Nadu Monday fearing LTTE cadre may try to flee to India, PTI reported.

"The possible influx of suicide bombers cannot be ruled out, especially in the wake of sympathisers who may provide them refuge here," a senior official of the federal Home ministry was quoted as saying.

In Chennai, the reaction to the death of Prabhakaran varied, IANS news agency reported.

"If the news is true, the last hope of the Tamils in Sri Lanka who once ruled that island nation long before the Sinhalese is lost forever," Chennai-based business executive KNP Dasarathan was quoted as saying.

"Whatever may be his shortcomings, he will always be a hero to us."

But for businessman N Suresh, Prabhakaran went too far. "If one looks at human life, the deaths in Sri Lanka sadden me, whether it is Prabhakaran or anyone else. Prabhakaran extended the elastic a bit too long and lost. He should have entered into a dialogue with the Sri Lankan government early."

Both Tamil Nadu Chief Minister M Karunanidhi and opposition AIADMK leader J Jayalalitha had endorsed a separate homeland for Sri Lankan Tamils in the last days of their election campaigns that ended last week.(dpa)