Troops killed three Tamil Tiger rebels in a gunfight and sank a rebel boat in a separate sea battle as fighting flared in Sri Lanka's northeast, the military said Monday. The fighting started late Sunday when the Sri Lankan navy found two clusters of Tamil Tiger boats - about a dozen in all - moving toward the Pulmoddai area on the northeast coast, said military spokesman Brig. Prasad Samarasinghe. When the naval boats went to investigate, the rebel craft attacked, sparking a three-hour sea battle, the military said.
It said one Tiger boat was sunk and several others were seriously damaged. The fighting killed "probably around 10 cadres ... 10 to 12," said Samarasinghe. There was no independent confirmation of the casualties. An hour after the sea battle began, the army launched an attack on a group of rebels in the Pulmoddai area who it believed were waiting to be picked up by the boats, Samarasinghe said. The ensuing gunfight killed three rebels and a soldier, he said. In further fighting, the air force bombed a suspected Tiger training base and mortar position Monday morning in the area of northern Sri Lanka that the rebels run as a de facto state, Samarasinghe said.
Rebel spokesman Rasiah Ilanthirayan could not immediately be reached for comment on the violence. The fighting late Sunday came after four soldiers were killed when a bomb, attached to a bicycle parked by the side of the road, exploded as a military truck passed by in government-controlled Jaffna peninsula in northern Sri Lanka. The military blamed the Tigers for the attack.