Sri Lankan air force jets killed seven Tamil Tiger fighters and injured many more in a fourth day of aerial bombings today in a bid to wrest control of a reservoir in the restive east, the rebels said.
Kfir fighter planes raided the eastern districts of Batticaloa and Trincomalee in an operation to clear access to a sluice gate, which the government accuses the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) of blocking to choke water supplies to farmers on government land.
Military officials said the air force had destroyed a rebel base in Batticaloa and believed the death toll was far higher, but the Tigers said their fighters were killed on their forward defence line with government territory.
The rebels vowed to hit back. "We can't continue to maintain our patience," said. S. Elilan, head of the Tigers' political wing in Trincomalee. "We will definitely retaliate... This is causing a war-like situation."
Hardline Buddhist monks in saffron robes who hate the Tigers and are allied to President Mahinda Rajapakse are trying to reach the sluice gate themselves. Around 1,000 local farmers from government territory joined them in protest.
Many observers fear the fighting could spiral out of control, rupture a 2002 truce and restart a two-decade civil war that has already killed more than 65,000 people.
Analysts and diplomats worry an exodus of truce monitors from Finland and Denmark after the rebels issued an ultimatum in the face of a European Union terror ban could create a dangerous vacuum and make the situation even more volatile.
The Tigers demanded monitors from European Union states Sweden, Finland and Denmark quit the 5-nation Sri Lanka Monitoring Mission (SLMM) by September 1st after the EU listed them as terrorists.
The Finns and Danes said on Friday they had been left with no choice but to remove 22 monitors between them in the absence of security guarantees. Sweden has not yet decided.
Their exit will badly hamper the mission at a time when it is monitoring the bloodiest period since the ceasefire. More than 800 people, most of them civilians, have been killed so far this year.
Sri Lanka's strained peace process is deadlocked. The Tigers have pulled out of peace talks indefinitely, Rajapakse has rejected their demand for a separate Tamil homeland outright, and analysts and diplomats widely fear it could take years to seal a final peace deal.