Sri Lanka says age of enemy no concern

COLOMBO, Aug 15 (Reuters) Sri Lanka today said the age of its enemy was of no concern after the air force killed at least 19 people, many of them teenagers, during a bombing raid in Tamil Tiger territory a day earlier.

Tiger rebels yesterday said the air force killed 61 schoolgirls who were attending a first-aid course. The government says it bombed a Tiger training and transit camp.

Nordic truce monitors only saw the bodies of 19 young men and women, and while it did not appear to be a rebel camp, they had not ruled out the possibility they were receiving civilian defence training.

UNICEF said they did not have access to the dead.

''The fact is that gender or the age limit is of no concern when it comes to training and when it comes to soldiers, because they are carrying arms in order to kill the enemy (government forces),'' Defence spokesman Keheliya Rambukwella told a news conference.

''So even it is a 17-year-old child in terms of age, they are soldiers who are prepared to kill whoever comes in front of them. Therefore, the age or the gender is not what is important.'' UNICEF says the Tigers and a breakaway faction, which the mainstream rebels accuse the military of helping mount attacks, are both recruiting underage children as soldiers, and the government has lobbied for international pressure to force the Tigers to stop.

Rambukwella showed journalists what appeared to be satellite footage of what he said were Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) fighters fleeing a training camp shortly after Kfir jets bombed it yesterday.

''What is important is the LTTE has taken these people, trained them, and that's a camp where they used to provide combats (sic) to the LTTE terrorist targets.'' REUTERS KD HS1619