Sri Lanka rebels say military shells refugee camp

COLOMBO, Dec 9 (Reuters) Sri Lankan army artillery fire hit two camps in rebel territory, killing four refugees and injuring 20, the Tamil Tigers said today, two days after the army accused the rebels of a similar attack.

The Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) accused the military of mounting an offensive in the eastern district of Batticaloa to push into their territory, which the army denied.

However, as with other recent clashes, independent confirmation of what had happened behind rebel lines was impossible.

''Sri Lankan military-fired artillery shells fell in front of the Pammivedduvan school refugee camp killing four civilians and injuring more than 10,'' the rebels said in an email to Reuters. It said 10 other civilians were injured seriously when shells hit another camp.

The incident occurred two days after the military said Tiger artillery hit a school in northeast Sri Lanka, killing a teacher, a schoolboy, three civilians and wounding 10 students.

The military said the Tigers continued to fire artillery further north in the neighbouring district of Trincomalee today, and around 350 people had sought refuge in a college.

Aid workers said around 50 displaced persons had reached the town of Kantale today morning, but the military had since closed access routes.

''The LTTE fired artillery towards Kantale this morning, and a hospital,'' said a spokesman at the Media Centre for National Security. ''Four civilians were injured.'' The fighting broke out after President Mahinda Rajapakse this week introduced new anti-terrorism laws in a crackdown on the Tigers and their supporters, after a failed suicide attack on his brother Gotabhaya, who is his Defence Secretary.

The rebels say the measures will only worsen a new chapter in the island's two-decade-old civil war.

Rebel leader Velupillai Prabhakaran last week declared the Tigers were resuming their independence struggle. Analysts say this means the island's conflict, in which more than 67,000 people have been killed since 1983, will likely escalate.

More than 3,000 civilians, troops and rebel fighters have been killed so far this year. Air strikes, suicide attacks and major artillery battles are increasingly common.

Yesterday, the rebels called on the government to reopen the island's main north-south highway, which runs through their territory to the army-held northern Jaffna peninsula. Analysts say the closure has badly hampered rebel movements and their ability to mount attacks.

The Tigers also rounded on the international community, peace mediator Norway and the Nordic Sri Lanka Monitoring Mission (SLMM), which oversees the remnants of a 2002 ceasefire, which is dead on the ground but which both sides say still holds.

''The Norwegian facilitators, the SLMM and the international community that has been backing the CFA (ceasefire agreement) have failed to condemn and halt the vast majority of the blatant CFA violations by the military,'' the Tigers said yesterday.

''This failure by the Norwegian facilitators, the SLMM and the international community, encouraging the Rajapakse government on its genocidal program and a military solution, will steadily push the island into a monumental irrecoverable state of destruction.'' REUTERS AB VV1826