At least 26 Tamil Tiger rebels and three soldiers were killed in a battle in northwestern Sri Lanka yesterday, the military said, as analysts sounded a warning that renewed civil war is spreading. The army confirmed troops were trying to neutralise heavy rebel guns in Mannar district, but refused to say whether they had entered terrain the rebels control under the terms of a now-battered 2002 truce as the Tigers claim. "The LTTE is attacking with mortars ... without considering the safety of the civilians in the area. Three soldiers were killed and 4 injured," military spokesman Brigadier Prasad Samarasinghe said. "We have retaliated to neutralise them and we have observed more than 20 Tiger dead bodies." In a separate incident, troops shot dead six Tigers who ambushed a route-clearing patrol in the eastern district of Batticaloa, taking the death toll in the past 48 hours to at least 42. The Tigers said they were fighting fierce artillery battles with hundreds of troops who had crossed into their territory in Mannar. The clash, 2km inside rebel lines, came as sporadic fighting continued in the east - where troops have evicted the Tigers from around 600 square km of land amid a declared drive to destroy them militarily. "This morning a contingent of army troops intruded into our parts of Mannar district ... and are holding 120 families in a village as human shields while they are firing at us," Tiger military spokesman Rasiah Ilanthiraiyan said earlier from the rebels' northern stronghold of Kilinochchi.