Sri Lankan troops have captured a section of rebel-held territory in the island's northwest and killed 44 Tamil Tigers, the military said today, as a new chapter in a 25-year civil war intensifies.
Troops killed 38 Tigers in a series of confrontations in the war-battered north yesterday, and killed six more today, the military said, adding the dead included an eastern Tiger leader called Shankar.
Troops captured a small chunk of rebel terrain in the northwestern district of Mannar , the military said, forging on with a declared campaign to evict the Tigers them from all terrain they control in the north, as they have in the east.
The Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE), who want to create an independent state in north and east Sri Lanka, were not immediately available for comment.
Pro-rebel Web site www.tamilnet.com said the Tigers resisted an army bid to advance across heavily-defended forward defence lines in the far northern Jaffna peninsula early today, and that the army retreated.
Totting up death toll claims by both sides, around 150 people have been reported killed since the government announced last week it was formally scrapping a battered 2002 ceasefire pact.
Analysts say both sides tend to exaggerate enemy losses and play down their own. Independent accounts of what has happened are almost never available.