THE SRI LANKAN army claims to have captured more territory from Tamil Tiger rebels in the north of the island in its continuing offensive to capture the insurgents' "political capital", Kilinochi.
The defence ministry yesterday said fierce firefights, hampered by monsoon rain, raged in the Wanni region adjoining Kilinochchi, 350km from the capital Colombo.
Battlefield sources confirmed that the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) groups suffered significant attrition in terms of men and material, the defence ministry said. It also admitted to having lost soldiers to booby-trapped devices, anti-personnel mines and mortar fire, but did not provide numbers.
There was no immediate comment from the LTTE, which has been fighting since 1983 for a separate homeland for the Tamils in the north and east of the republic, claiming they were discriminated against by the island's majority Sinhalese majority. More than 70,000 people had died in Sri Lanka's civil war.
However, in a feeble effort at a riposte, pro-rebel Puthinam.com website said the LTTE had "permitted" troops to advance into its territory only to hit them with heavy fire. Both sides exaggerate casualty figures, routinely claiming to have inflicted heavy losses on the other in their continuing war of attrition, while underplaying their own. Independent verification of either the fighting or those killed remains impossible as journalists and neutral observers are barred from the war zone.
Fierce fighting between the army and LTTE erupted in January after President Mahinda Rajapaksa's federal coalition withdrew from the 2002 Norway-brokered truce between the two sides after the rebels outscored the military almost 11 to one - 3,830 to 351 - in monitored ceasefire violations.
A UN food convoy reached the battle zone at the weekend where more than 200,000 locals, mostly Tamils, displaced by the fighting were existing in makeshift relief camps or sheltering from the heavy monsoon rain.
They were trapped between the rebels who want to use them as a shield against the advancing forces and the military, whose assurances of safe passage they distrust.
President Rajapaksa said the military was trying to minimise civilian casualties following protests by ethnic Tamils in neighbouring India. Mr Rajapaksa, who is waging a "fight-to-the-finish" campaign against the LTTE, assured Indian prime minister Manmohan Singh over the telephone at the weekend that his security forces were under strict instructions to avoid causing civilian casualties.
Last week Mr Singh, under pressure from Indian Tamils who constitute an important ingredient of his federal coalition, said a military victory would not end Sri Lanka's long-simmering ethnic conflict and encouraged Mr Rajapaksa's administration and the LTTE to seek a negotiated settlement.