Sri Lankan troops cleared mines and searched for boobytraps in newly captured Tamil Tiger terrain in the island's northeast yesterday, the military said.
Sporadic artillery fire from the rebels killed one soldier and wounded four others in the eastern Trincomalee area yesterday.
The army captured the southern edge of strategic Trincomalee harbor on Monday after days of artillery battles. It was the first major capture of enemy territory by either side since a 2002 ceasefire.
Fighting has now subsided after the army captured the rebel-held settlement of Sampur, near Trincomalee, after weeks of the most intense battles in the east, and then the north, since the 2002 truce.
"We are conducting search and clear operations in Sampur, clearing landmines from the area," said a military spokesman. "They have withdrawn from the Sampur area. They have not fired any weapons overnight."
The Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) had been able to shell Trincomalee's major naval base and disrupt a maritime supply route to the besieged army-held Jaffna peninsula to the north from their positions in Sampur.
The latest episode in Sri Lanka's two-decade civil war began with air strikes on rebel territory in late July amid a dispute over a blocked water supply. The fighting then spread to Jaffna. A week ago, the army began an offensive to clear the rebels from Sampur.
The military said 15 troops were killed and more than 90 were injured during the Sampur offensive. It estimates dozens of Tigers were killed.
"Let's hope the military have now ended their offensive, because it could completely collapse the ceasefire agreement," said Sri Lanka Monitoring Mission spokes-man Thorfinnur Omarsson.
"The Tigers are asking us if the truce is over. We certainly hope it is not," he said.
The government and the rebels say they continue to stand by the terms of a 2002 truce, which still technically holds.
But the foes each blame the other for trying to force a full-scale return to a two-decade civil war that has killed more than 65,000 people since 1983.
The commander of the Tamil Tiger rebels in the east, S. Elilan, disputed the government's claim that Sampur had been captured.
"The battle is going on for Sampur. The army has come to the area and we are also there," Elilan told reporters.
He said he has written to Nordic ceasefire monitors to rule whether the government's military offensive amounts to a declaration of full-scale war. If the monitors say it does, the Tigers would no longer be bound by a four-year-old Norway-brokered ceasefire, he said.
"We have many people killed and over 46,000 people displaced. This is really a declaration of war," Elilan said.
Hundreds of civilians, troops and Tiger fighters have been killed in the past month, and more than 200,000 people have been displaced and are now living in refugee camps across the island's rural northeast.
Analysts fear the Tigers could strike elsewhere, possibly in the capital Colombo, the site of two bombings, assassinations and a string of abductions in recent weeks.
The violence has already hit the island's tourism industry, and many companies have put investments in the US$23 billion economy on the backburner.
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