A breakaway faction of Tamil rebels said that their fighters had successfully led an attack against three mainstream Tamil Tiger training camps in eastern Sri Lanka early yesterday, killing dozens of guerrillas.
"Our information was that there were between 80 to 100 LTTE [Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam] cadres at the camps and 45 to 65 managed to escape," said Asad Moulana, a spokesman for the breakaway group, named after its leader Karuna.
"Our commanders have confirmed that 35 Tigers were killed," he said.
He said that the attack had taken place at 1:30am yesterday morning.
Sri Lankan military officials confirmed that the attack had taken place.
A senior military official said that the army had received information from its intelligence officers that an attack on LTTE camps had taken place.
The officer, who cannot be named due to military regulations, said the military was awaiting further details.
Rasiah Ilanthirayan, military spokesman for the mainstream rebels, however, said no Tiger fighters were killed, and only four wounded in the attack.
"They were stopped before they could reach the camps and I can confirm that none of our cadres died," he said by the telephone from rebels' headquarters in Kilinochchi.
Two Karuna fighters were also wounded in the attack on the Thoppigala jungle camp, a major Tamil Tiger training base, breakaway spokesman Moulana said by telephone from the eastern Batticaloa District.
Two other smaller camps in the area had also been overrun in the attack, he said.
Moulana said that 17 automatic rifles and two rocket propelled grenade launchers had been recovered during the raid on the LTTE camps.
Both factions often exaggerate their battle successes or hide their losses.
There was no way to reconcile the conflicting reports.
Karuna and thousands of other renegade cadres broke away from the LTTE in 2004.
Karuna was the rebels' highest military commander and led several major assaults.
The faction broke away following disputes over LTTE's political strategy.
Karuna also accused the mainstream rebels, who are based mainly in the north of the country, of sending his eastern-based cadres to fight on the battle fronts more often than the northern fighters are sent.
The mainstream Tamil Tiger rebels have accused the government of helping the Karuna faction.
The issue has been an ongoing complication and source of bitterness in relations between the Sri Lankan government and the Tamil Tigers.
The military says it has not provided any help to the breakaway faction.
Sri Lanka's civil war lasted nearly two decades until it came to an official end in 2002, when Norway brokered a ceasefire.
Whether the truce can still be considered as functional has become a point of debate, however, with violence between the two sides occurring on a nearly daily basis.
More than 3,500 combatants and civilians have been killed in fighting this year, according to the Defense Ministry.
The Tamil Tiger rebels are fighting to create a separate homeland for Sri Lanka's 3.1 million Tamils.
They have long said that the majority Sinhalese ethnic group discriminates against the minority Tamil group.
Before the ceasefire, the civil war left 65,000 dead and 1.6 million people displaced.
Meanwhile, Sri Lanka's air force destroyed a Tamil Tiger rebel base and artillery position in the volatile northeast yesterday, the military said.
Air force fighter jets bombed the insurgents' training base in northern Mullaithivu, said Major Upali Rajapakse, an officer at the Defense ministry's Media Center for National Security.
Three hours later, war planes pounded a rebel artillery base in the east, he said.
"Pilots have confirmed that both targets were destroyed," Rajapakse said.
He did not have details of damage or casualties.
There was no immediate comment from the rebels.
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