Two Sri Lankan soldiers killed in rebel attack

COLOMBO, Dec 28 (Reuters) Sri Lanka's Tamil Tiger guerrillas detonated a mine today in the northern Jaffna peninsula, killing two soldiers, the military said.

Three soldiers were wounded in the blast targeting an army truck, a spokesman for the Media Centre for National Security said.

Claymore fragmentation mine attacks by the Tamil Tiger rebels have increased in the north and the east as fighting with the military intensifies.

More than 3,000 civilians, troops and rebels have been killed this year, despite a 2002 ceasefire that international monitors say now exists only on paper.

Sri Lankan President Mahinda Rajapakse has rejected the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam's demand for a separate homeland and his army has vowed to flush them out of the volatile east.

The rebels also kidnapped two members of a rival Tamil political group from their office in Puttalam in the northwest of the country late on Wednesday, the military said.

The two were members of the People's Liberation Organisation of Tamil Eelam which has joined the political mainstream after giving up arms.

REUTERS PDM VC1622