Thousands flee fighting in east Sri Lanka

COLOMBO, Mar 8 (Reuters) Thousands of civilians are fleeing Tamil Tiger-held territory in east Sri Lanka as troops and rebels battle with artillery and mortar bombs, the two sides said today, amid a rebel warning of a bloodbath.

Nearly 13,700 civilians have fled rebel areas in the eastern district of Batticaloa in the past fortnight, 3,800 of those alone on Wednesday. Both the Tigers and military said thousands more were fleeing today.

''Civilians are worried they will be held as human shields like earlier and are fleeing the area,'' said military spokesman Brigadier Prasad Samarasinghe.

''The security forces' plan is to liberate civilians from the Tigers and neutralise rebel gun positions that pose a direct threat to troops in Batticaloa,'' he added.

The military has already captured a large coastal swathe of territory in recent months that the Tigers held under the terms of a now tattered 2002 ceasefire pact, forcing the rebels to flee to jungles further inland or to their northern base by sea.

However, troops had not yet begun a push to clear the Tigers from a jungle area called Thoppigala around 40 km west of Batticaloa, where rebel fighters have regrouped and which analysts say will be the next target of a military offensive.

The Tigers on Monday warned of a bloodbath if the international community was unable to convince the military to halt a declared plan to wipe them out militarily, and analysts fear a new episode in a two-decade civil war that has killed around 68,000 people since 1983 will deepen.

The Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE), who say they are fighting for an independent state for minority Tamils in north and east Sri Lanka, said the military had mounted attacks on most of the areas it still controls in Batticaloa.

The Tigers said they had recovered the body of one soldier due to the fighting, but there were no immediate details of any wider casualties.

Today's fighting comes after a spree of land and sea battles, ambushes and suicide attacks that have killed around 4,000 people in the past 15 months alone.

It also comes a day after authorities started to resettle the first of more than 15,000 refugees displaced by months of fighting in newly captured territory further north in Batticaloa.

President Mahinda Rajapakse's government has vowed to unveil a power-sharing proposal within weeks, but has rejected the Tigers' demands for a separate homeland.

REUTERS AKJ RAI1919