Sri Lanka's Tamil Tiger guerrillas appeared close to recapturing their former stronghold of Jaffna town yesterday, but the government said troops had blocked rebel advances elsewhere in the conflict zone.
State-owned Sri Lanka Broadcasting Corporation said in a news bulletin monitored in Colombo that Sri Lankan air force jets had destroyed a rebel communication centre.
The leader of the main opposition party described the intensifying war as the island nation's "greatest crisis" since independence in 1948 and urged the government to protect the 500,000 civilians on the peninsula.
The aid agency Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF) said a day-andnight curfew had been imposed in Jaffna, but there was no fighting within the town.
Mr Gabriel Turjillo, head of the MSF France mission in Colombo, said that food, petrol and medical supplies were in short supply, and almost all of the patients in a 1,000-bed hospital had been evacuated.
A government statement said that on Thursday the Tamil Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) had mounted a major assault on army defences in the area of Ariyalai, 10 km south-east of Jaffna.
The government said rebels had simultaneously launched an attack in Thanankillapu, close to Ariyalai, but troops backed by aircraft, artillery and helicopter gunships had fought back.
With the latest casualties, the combined death toll on both sides in two days of fighting rose above 200, the government said. At least 60,000 people have died since the ethnic conflict began in 1983.
An LTTE statement, issued in London late on Thursday, said the rebels were only 1 km from the administrative centre of Jaffna, the Tamils' cultural capital that fell to government forces in 1995. It lies at the tip of the Indian Ocean island state's northern peninsula. The LTTE said troops had fled in disarray.
President Chandrika Kumaratunga tried to rally the Sri Lankan troops' morale. "Let us learn lessons from our recent setbacks and march forward to wipe out the LTTE terrorism completely and for good," she said, adding that new supplies of modern fighting equipment would reach the military in the next few weeks.
An Israeli newspaper reported that Israel, which renewed diplomatic relations with Sri Lanka this month, had agreed to sell Colombo a fleet of combat aircraft. Indian newspapers said Sri Lanka had already bought seven Israeli Kfir jets and 24 containers of arms and equipment.
Mr Dharmalingam Siddharthan, head of the People's Liberation Organisation of Tamil Eelam (PLOTE), said the situation in Jaffna was worsening by the day.
"We are very worried for the civilian population of Jaffna. If the LTTE succeeds in pushing the army into the Jaffna area the war is going to take place in the thickly populated areas."
The offensive threatens to provoke a further seaborne exodus of civilians to India, joining 100,000 refugees already there.