Dozens Dead As Sri Lankan Fighting Escalates

Bitter fighting between Sri Lankan government soldiers and Tamil Tiger rebels claimed dozens of lives today.

The army said it had killed 37 rebels and lost six of its own soldiers in battles in the north of the country, which the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam claims as its homeland.

The worst violence was in the Mannar district just south of rebel-held territory.

The military spokesman, Brigadier Udaya Nanayakkara, said guerrilla fighters attacked soldiers in an offensive aimed at recapturing land the military seized over the weekend. The military repelled the attack in a battle that left 35 rebels and six soldiers dead, he said.

Troops killed two rebel fighters in separate fighting in the Vavuniya district and discovered more than 400 anti-personnel mines in caches in the area, he said.

Over the weekend, attacks across the north resulted in the deaths of 56 rebels and six soldiers, according to reports from the military.

A rebel spokesman, Rasiah Ilanthirayan, said large battles had taken place in the north, but said the military's death tolls were inaccurate. He did not provide figures of his own, saying they were not yet available.

Meanwhile, Sri Lankan forces defused a bomb hidden in the garden of a heavily guarded Colombo residential building where many politicians live, the military said.

Nanayakkara said the 1.2kg (2.7lb) explosive - discovered by a resident - was presumed to be an assassination attempt on the air force chief, Air Marshall Roshan Goonetilleke, whose house is located nearby.

"There are so many senior officers living there - including parliamentarians, military officers - it is not possible to say who the target is. But we suspect they targeted the air force commander," he said.

The bomb attempt appeared to be part of a new wave of attacks by the rebels in the capital. The military said this showed how badly the rebels were suffering from the fighting in the north.

Last Wednesday, a female suicide bomber killed one person in a government office in a failed attempt to kill a cabinet minister. Hours later, a bomb exploded at a suburban department store, killing 19 people. Authorities blamed the separatist Tamil Tigers for the attacks.

In his first comment on the matter since the bombings, Ilanthirayan denied the rebels were behind the attacks.

"We have nothing to do with that," he said.

European monitors said they feared civilian casualties were approaching the levels seen before a truce between the government and the rebels was signed five years ago. The 2002 Norwegian-brokered ceasefire has largely fallen apart and fighting has intensified again over the past two years, with a further escalation in the past few weeks.

Last week, in his annual Heroes Day speech, Velupillai Prabhakaran, the reclusive leader of the Tamil Tiger rebels, said that peace efforts were a waste of time and vowed to strike back at the island's "genocidal" government.

More than 70,000 people have been killed in 24 years of conflict. The rebels demand a separate homeland for ethnic minority Tamils in Sri Lanka's north and east, following what they claim has been historic discrimination under governments dominated by the majority Sinhalese.