COLOMBO, November 27 (IslamOnline & News Agencies) - Members of a suicide bomb squad went on parade and war monuments were decorated red Wednesday, November 27, as Sri Lanka's Tamil Tiger celebrated thousands of fighters killed in the separatist struggle and Tamil rebel leader said he will accept regional autonomy.

It was the first time that some of the "heroes day" celebrations were being marked in areas controlled by the government, as the two sides observe a truce, Agence France-Presse (AFP) said.

This was the first time the Black Tigers, as they are known, have taken part in the annual events to honor those who have died fighting in this two-decade-long war.

The elusive Tiger leader Velupillai Prabhakaran, convicted in absentia for a series of rebel attacks, was expected to deliver an address in rebel-held territory later.

At Vadamarachchi district in the rebel-held north, at least 27 cadres of the Tigers' suicide unit marched in black uniforms with their heads masked to prevent identification, witnesses said.

The Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) has carried out 247 suicide bombings since 1987, with victims including former Indian Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi and Sri Lankan President Ranasinghe Premadasa.

But the LTTE and Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe's government entered a ceasefire in February 2002 and will hold their third round of Norwegian-brokered peace talks next week in Oslo.

The rebels took "heroes day" celebrations to the government-controlled eastern town of Batticaloa, where hundreds of relatives paid their respects to LTTE cadres killed in combat with government troops.

"It was a very moving scene as tearful relatives paid respect to the portraits of LTTErs," a resident told AFP over the telephone.

"There was a long queue to enter the memorial and it took one more than two hours to take a full view of the whole thing," another resident said.

Batticaloa is where Tiger leader Prabhakaran went to primary school, and rebel supporters mourned the dead at the town's LTTE war cemetery and at a Hindu cultural center at Trincomalee elsewhere in the eastern province.

The only trouble Wednesday was reported at Point Pedro in the war-torn northern Jaffna district, where the army ordered university students to put down a "heroes day" banner.

The students responded with a sit-in protest, but there was no violence after intervention by the Scandinavian force monitoring the ceasefire.

At Vavuniya, the last major government-controlled town near the rebel-held Wanni district, supporters blared battle music, waved the LTTE's red-bannered flags and put up maps of Tamil Eelam, the separate homeland the guerrillas have been fighting for decades to establish.

The rebels, however, said at peace recent peace talks in Thailand that they were no longer demanding a separate state for the island's Tamil minority.

More than 60,000 people have died in three decades of ethnic bloodshed in Sri Lanka. The rebels lost 17,211 cadres between 1982 and June 2001, according to their figures.

Meanwhile, the leader of the Tamil Tiger rebels said Wednesday he was prepared to accept regional autonomy for his people within Sri Lanka, dropping a decades-old demand for independence.

But Velupillai Prabhakaran warned that the separatist struggle would resume if negotiations for self-rule broke down.

In a speech broadcast on rebel radio, Prabhakaran said he would "favorably consider a political framework that offers substantial regional autonomy and self-government to the Tamil people on the basis of their right to internal self-determination."

But he added: "If our demand for regional self-rule based on the right to internal self-determination is rejected, we have no alternative other than to secede and form an independent state."

Suicide bombers from the Tamil Tiger rebel group have appeared in public for the first time at a parade to commemorate fallen comrades in the civil war.

The Tamil Tigers pioneered the art of suicide bombing with scores of assassinations of prominent politicians in Sri Lanka, as well as former Indian Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi, BBC News Online said.

Speaking to the BBC, a member of the Tigers suicide squad explained why he had pledged to give his life.

He said he had seen his relatives killed and wanted to show his strength to safeguard not only his family but his community.

Refusing to give his name, the suicide bomber said he was not scared to die for the cause and although his parents did not know he was a member of the Black Tigers they would be proud of his achievements when his time came.

More than 240 Tamil men and women have carried out suicide attacks for the Tigers in this war, but this is the first time any have spoken with outsiders, BBC said.

At sea, the Tigers have sent suicide bombers to ram boats packed with explosives into naval vessels, a tactic they believe other armed groups around the world are now copying from them.