Senior Sri Lanka rebel says truce void, war back on

COLOMBO, July 31 (Reuters) Sri Lanka's four-year ceasefire is now void and the island's two-decade civil war is back on, a top Tamil Tiger rebel today told Reuters on Monday as the guerrillas and the military entered a sixth straight day of fighting.

S Elilan, head of the Tigers' political wing in the restive eastern district of Trincomalee, said army troops had resumed a bid to advance towards land they control in the east and had fired artillery and mortars at their territory in the north.

''The ceasefire agreement has become null and void at the moment,'' Elilan said by telephone from Trincomalee, adding government troops were continuing an advance towards their forward defence line in the east in a water supply dispute.

''The war is on and we are ready,'' added Elilan. ''The war has begun. It is the government which has started the war...

Militarily, we have decided to fight back if the Sri Lankan army enters our area.

Elilan is not the Tigers' main spokesman, but he is one of the their top officials and their political head in Trincomalee. He has repeatedly warned of a return to war.

The rebels, angry at President Mahinda Rajapakse's outright rejection of their demand for a separate homeland for ethnic Tamils in the north and east, have pulled out of peace talks indefinitely and have been cranking up the rhetoric for months.

Sri Lanka's air force has killed 15 rebels in five days of aerial bombing raids in the east and injured several others.

The army says it has sustained no casualties, despite becoming bogged down in a minefield yesterday as they tried to reach a sluice they accuse the Tigers of blocking to choke water supplies to Sinhalese farmers in government territory.

It is the first open advance on rebel-held areas since the 2002 ceasefire.

The head of the island's Nordic truce monitoring mission said on Saturday the truce was dead in all but name after fresh fighting has killed more than 800 people so far this year. But he said he expected low intensity fighting rather than a full-blown return to a conflict that has killed more than 65,000 people over the past two decades.

Jane's Defence Weekly analyst Iqbal Athas fears the clashes could spread elsewhere across the island.

Many diplomats fear Black Tiger suicide bombers, blamed for a failed assassination attack on the Army Commander, could bring the war to Colombo, which would further hammer investor confidence in the 23-billion dollar economy.

''I think right now they're at war,'' Athas said. ''If you look at the (army) operation that has started now, it is becoming clear that the confrontation has begun.'' Reuters SB VP0940