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Four killed in Sri Lanka battles

Government troops and separatist Tamil Tiger rebels clashed in two separate battles in northern Sri Lanka leaving four combatants dead, the military said yesterday.

The fighting broke out on Saturday night in Vavuniya district, a frontier between government-controlled and rebel-held areas in Sri Lanka's north, said an officer at the Defense Ministry's media center.

A group of Tamil Tigers attacked an army patrol in Thampane, setting off a gunbattle that killed two insurgents, said the officer, who spoke on condition of anonymity citing policy. One soldier was killed and eight others were wounded.

Separately, soldiers shot and killed a rebel who attacked troops guarding the northern defense line that separates government and rebel-controlled areas. The army sustained no casualties, the officer said.

No independent confirmation of the military's claims was available. Rebel spokesman Rasiah Ilanthirayan could not immediately be reached for comment yesterday.

Both sides routinely exaggerate enemy casualty figures while underplaying their own.

Vavuniya -- about 210km north of the capital Colombo -- has become a flashpoint in Sri Lanka's escalating conflict.

In July the government seized full control of Sri Lanka's Eastern Province from the Tigers after 13 years. But the guerrillas still hold a vast area in the north where they run a de facto state.

Sri Lanka's civil war began in 1983 when ethnic minority Tamils fed up with discrimination at the hands of the Sinhalese-dominated government launched a violent campaign for a separate state.

A brief lull in fighting occurred after a Norwegian-brokered ceasefire in 2002, but a wave of assassinations, ground operations and airstrikes over the past 22 months have killed more than 5,000 people.
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