Lanka, rebels claim high enemy kills in clash

Colombo, July 20: Sri Lanka's Tamil Tigers launched a pre-dawn attack on an army detachment in the restive northwestern district of Mannar today, and both sides claimed to have killed nearly a dozen of their foes.

The incident came a day after the government staged a show of military might in the capital with a parade of tanks and troops and a fly-past by fighter jets to celebrate the capture of vast swathes of eastern territory from the rebels.

It also comes after a rash of land and sea clashes, ambushes and air raids that have killed an estimated 4,500 people since last year alone.

''There was a confrontation in the early morning in Mannar. The LTTE fired mortars and artillery. We lost three (soldiers), and four were wounded,'' said military spokesman Brigadier Prasad Samarasinghe. ''Ground troops observed nine LTTE cadres killed, and technical sources say 24 were injured.'' The Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE), who are fighting for an independent state in north and east Sri Lanka, called their attack a ''preemptive strike'', and said they had killed 10 soldiers and that four of their own fighters were killed.

''One of our units raided a mini camp in a pre-emptive strike as it was a source of harassment and shelling of civilian areas,'' Tiger military spokesman Rasiah Ilanthiraiyan said by telephone from the rebels' de facto capital of Kilinochchi.

''Our men found 10 bodies of Sri Lankan army soldiers and collected military materials such as weapons.'' Ilanthiraiyan said subsequent army shelling had hit a civilian settlement on the Tigers' side of the front line separating government from rebel territory, wounding a mother and her 11-month-old child.

There was no independent confirmation of what had happened or the death toll.

Analysts say the foes have tended to exaggerate enemy losses and play down their own in a war that has killed nearly 70,000 people since 1983.

And while losing their foothold in the east is a significant military defeat, the rebels have vowed to switch to guerilla warfare tactics in a bid to cripple the economy with attacks on major military and economic targets. Analysts say there is no clear winner on the horizon.

Reuters>