UNHCR chief visits war-torn S Lanka, meets rebels

COLOMBO, July 26 (Reuters) United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees Antonio Guterres visited Sri Lanka's war-torn northeast today to assess the plight of hundreds of thousands of internally displaced and met the Tamil Tigers.

Guterres' visit comes against a backdrop of escalating violence between the military and rebel Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE), which many fear could rupture a 2002 ceasefire and open a new chapter of a two-decade civil war that has killed over 65,000 people.

It also comes days ahead of a new visit by Norwegian special peace envoy Jon Hanssen-Bauer amid fresh diplomatic efforts to break a deadlock in talks between the foes, the government said.

''The purpose of (Guterres') visit is to meet displaced people in the north and east of the country and hear first-hand their concerns and needs,'' the UNHCR said in a statement.

Guterres also met members of the LTTE to discuss humanitarian issues related to displaced people, but the Tigers made no comment after he left their northern stronghold by helicopter.

UNHCR estimates there are around 315,000 long-term internally displaced in Sri Lanka due to the protracted conflict, 67,000 of whom live in camps and around 247,000 of whom live with relatives and friends.

There are another 125,000 Sri Lankan refugees abroad, 68,000 of them in neighbouring India.

Unarmed Nordic truce monitors say a rash of clashes and attacks have killed more than 800 people so far this year -- most of them civilians. Tens of thousands have been displaced.

DAILY VIOLENCE Sporadic violence continued today. One soldier was shot dead and another injured by suspected rebel snipers near a main border crossing into Tiger territory in the north-central district of Vavuniya. A police constable was shot and injured at a checkpoint in the northwestern district of Mannar.

The attacks came as Sri Lankans remembered anti-Tamil riots in July 1983, triggered after the Tigers killed 13 soldiers that marked the start of civil war.

The scars of that war are deep. Many civilians in the army-held Jaffna peninsula are too scared to venture out after dark because of nightly shootings and attacks.

Ordinary Tamils resent what they see as an army occupation of Jaffna -- their cultural heartland -- where vast tracts of prime farmland are cordoned off as military high security zones and still peppered with landmines.

Some openly back the Tigers, who have been listed as a terrorist group by the United States, Britain, India, Canada and the European Union.

''I lost my father in 1988 due to shelling. I was just two years old,'' said 18-year-old student Kuganathan Navaratnam, standing outside a Jaffna bank.

''I am studying well. I would love to join the LTTE, but I can't leave my mother and sister,'' he added. ''There will only be a war if it is started by the government.'' REUTERS SI HS1728