22 Dead in Tamil Tiger Assault on Naval Base

Tamil Tiger rebels launched a major raid on a Sri Lankan naval base on the Jaffna peninsula today, sparking a gun battle which left at least 22 dead.

Hours later a bomb exploded near an army bus in Colombo, claiming the life of a soldier and wounded six people. The bomb was attached to a motorcycle parked in a crowded shopping area near the port.

The upsurge in violence appears to signal the collapse of the internationally brokered peace agreement between the Tamil Tigers and the Sri Lankan government. The undeclared war has claimed more than 5,000 lives in 18 months and hundreds of people are believed to have been disappeared.

Britain halted debt relief this month in anger at the government's human rights record. Germany stopped aid last December. The United States has also voiced its anger over the "deterioration in Sri Lanka's human rights record".

None of this has stopped the fighting, which has seen a series of clashes and heavy casualties on both sides.

The two sides gave conflicting reports of the battle in the north of the country, which centered on a small navy camp in the village of Delft and flared just after midnight. It appears that a small group of Tamil Tiger fighters had attacked the camp with back up from a flotilla of rebel vessels.

Rebel spokesman Rasiah Ilanthirayan said that Tamil Tiger forces had killed 35 sailors and lost four of their own fighters.

"The fighting lasted only 20 minutes and we completely overran the camp," Mr Ilanthirayan told the Associated Press by telephone. The rebel forces then fled the scene by boat, he added. "Our attacking unit counted 35 bodies during the time they were in [the camp]."

Army spokesman Brigadier Prasad Samarasinghe dismissed the Tiger version of events. He told the Guardian that only four sailors had been killed, four wounded - and 18 Tigers killed.

"The LTTE [Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam] had infiltrated the civilian settlements and attacked. The fighting at the camp lasted just one hour but the sea battle went on from one thirty in the morning until six. With the air force we destroyed four of their boats completely."

The violence took place just a day after the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) announced it had pulled out staff from checkpoints between government-held and rebel areas in northern Sri Lanka.

Without the presence of the ICRC, the military will shut down the checkpoints, stopping aid workers and ceasefire monitors from traveling between areas held by the opposing sides.

The ICRC ensured safe passage for civilians, but a series of "security incidents" caused the organization to withdraw. The rebels have fought the government since 1983 to create a separate homeland for the island nation's ethnic Tamil minority, who have suffered decades of discrimination under the Sinhalese-dominated government.

Nearly 70,000 people have died in the conflict, including about 5,000 killed since December 2005, when violence flared despite a 2002 cease-fire that is now in tatters.