Sri Lanka jets bomb rebel bases, troops ambushed

COLOMBO, July 3 (Reuters) Sri Lankan warplanes pounded Tamil Tiger targets in the east today and three soldiers were killed in a suspected rebel ambush, the military said.

The ambush came hours after the air raids on a jungle area called Toppigala in the restive east when military is driving rebels from territory they have held under a now crumbling 2002 ceasefire.

''In support of our ground operations, the air force took two suspected LTTE targets west of Toppigala,'' said military spokesman Brigadier Prasad Samarasinghe.

The soldiers were killed by a fragmentation mine, of the type commonly used by Tiger rebels, in the northern town of Vavuniya. The Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) were not immediately available for comment.

Earlier, the military said soldiers had killed four rebel fighters in an overnight clash along the forward defence lines that separate government from rebel-held territory in the island's far north.

The clash in the northern Jaffna peninsula was the latest in a series of land and sea battles, ambushes and bombings that have killed an estimated 4,500 people since a new chapter in the two-decade civil war erupted last year.

''Troops confronted the enemy by the forward defence lines in Muhamalai. Four LTTE cadres were killed,'' Samarasinghe said.

''Our troops can see the bodies but have not recovered them because of minefields.'' Fighting is now focused on the north, where the Tigers run a de facto state after the government evicted them from swathes of territory they controlled in the east.

The Tigers, who see themselves as the army of the separate state they are fighting to establish, say they have now switched to guerrilla tactics and will continue to battle security forces in the east.

REUTERS RKM HS2138