Rebels say break Sri Lanka army's northern defences

JAFFNA, Sri Lanka, Aug 12 (Reuters) Sri Lanka's Tamil Tiger rebels said today they had broken through army defences in the island's far north and were advancing on the government-held Jaffna peninsula, in the fiercest fighting since a 2002 truce.

The Tigers said they had pushed through a no-man's-land that separates rebel and government territory, destroyed army checkpoints on the other side and were advancing along the main A9 arterial road that connects the peninsula to their stronghold.

Aid workers reported pockets of fighting inside government territory near army forward defence lines, and truce monitors had received reports of fighting on beaches near Jaffna. Residents said hundreds were fleeing fishing villages near Jaffna.

The military said it still controlled the whole peninsula and had killed around 100 rebels, but said a few might have got through.

''We have completely destroyed the army checkpoints at the Muhamalai (border) crossing, and we are advancing on Jaffna,'' a Tiger official at the rebel Voice of Tigers radio station told Reuters, asking not to be named.

He said that the rebels' feared Sea Tiger wing had attacked just south of Jaffna town and assaulted a navy base at the island's northern tip before dawn. Residents living along the path of the Tiger advance had been told to leave immediately.

Around 40,000 troops are stationed in Jaffna, which is cut off from the rest of the island by rebel territory.

''We have total control over the peninsula,'' said Major Upali Rajapakse of the government's National Security Centre. ''Maybe one or two Tigers are coming inside, but the military is managing to repulse them.'' He said the Navy had sunk five Sea Tiger boats near Jaffna.

The Tigers rained artillery on the strategic eastern port of Trincomalee, a vital maritime army supply line to Jaffna, before dawn. The military said there was some damage, but gave no details.

The Reuters witness in Jaffna, where the army has declared an indefinite curfew to keep people in their homes, heard a fierce exchange of artillery fire to the east, and said electricity to the town had died.

Sri Lanka's Tamils consider Jaffna their cultural homeland, and analysts say the Tigers are intent on recapturing it.

Robban Nilsson of the unarmed Nordic truce monitoring mission said government fighting on new fronts in the north and east was ''very worrying''.

The military accused the Tigers of provoking the northern confrontation and the government has said it will not halt operations until it controls a disputed waterway in the east and an irrigation reservoir that feeds it. This was the issue which sparked the fighting in the first place 18 days ago.

The Tigers insist the land is theirs and say continued army attacks are effectively a declaration of war.

''The problem is the government basically started this. I think we are inclined to sit back and let them take it on the chin for a while,'' said one G7 diplomat.

North of the town of Batticaloa towards a sluice gate on the waterway, the Red Cross say, at least 15,000 Tamils are displaced behind rebel lines having spent days under shellfire. A further 30,000 people have fled their homes to government-held territory.

The Tigers have long demanded a separate homeland for ethnic Tamils in the north and east of Sri Lanka but President Mahinda Rajapakse has ruled this out. The rebels say any return to stalled peace talks is a distant prospect.

Reuters BDP GC0945