SriLanka-CivilWar 5thLd-Writethru 04-23

April 24, 2008 at 4:00 AM

At least 90 reported killed in fierce battle on Sri Lanka

Eds: AMs. UPDATES with military saying 76 soldiers dead or missing.

AP Photo GFX863

By RAVI NESSMAN

Associated Press Writer

COLOMBO, Sri Lanka (AP) — Tamil rebels and Sri Lankan troops fought one of their fiercest battles in years Wednesday, battering each other with small arms and mortars in a confrontation that the military said killed 100 guerrillas and left 76 soldiers dead or missing.

The rebels claimed they killed more than 100 soldiers and lost only 16 of their fighters in a 10-hour firefight they characterized as a rout of the heavily armed government forces.

Either way, the battle was a serious blow to the government’s promise to capture the Tamil Tigers’ de facto state in the north, crush the rebel group and end the 25-year-old civil war in this Indian Ocean island nation by the end of the year.

As with most battles, the two sides gave very different accounts.

The military said fighting broke out just before dawn when rebel forces overran government positions in the rugged Muhamalai region of the Jaffna peninsula, north of rebel-held territory

Government troops fought back with small arms, mortars and tanks, eventually driving off the assault and launching a counteroffensive that pushed 500 yards into Tamil Tiger territory, the military spokesman, Brig. Udaya Nanayakkara, said.

Soon after the ground fighting, air force jets and helicopters destroyed two rebel artillery positions and hit rebel bunkers in the area, the military said in a statement.

The military initially said 15 soldiers died, then increased that toll to 38. By early Thursday, it said 43 were dead, 33 were missing and 120 were wounded. The toll was the worst suffered by the military in months and would make it one of their deadliest battles since renewed fighting started here more than two years ago.

Rebel spokesman Rasiah Ilanthirayan said the rebels counted more than 100 dead soldiers and about 500 wounded troops. They recovered the bodies of at least 30 of the soldiers, he said.

Both sides routinely inflate casualty figures for the other side and underreport their own losses. Independent accounts of the fighting are unavailable because journalists are barred from the war zone.

Ilanthirayan accused the military of sparking the battle. "They attempted to get near our positions. That’s when the clashes erupted," he told The Associated Press.

In a later statement e-mailed to reporters, Ilanthirayan said the fighting began about 2:30 a.m., when troops backed by armored vehicles and artillery batteries tried to capture rebel fortifications on the front line.

The guerrillas fought back in a battle that lasted past noon and eventually forced the troops to withdraw to their earlier positions, he said. The rebels counted more than 100 dead soldiers and about 500 wounded troops, he said. Sixteen rebels were killed, he said.

Fighting between the two sides has escalated since the government pulled out of a long-ignored cease-fire with the rebels and forced out the Nordic truce monitors who were some of the only observers with access to the war zone.

Senior government officials have vowed to destroy the rebel group by the end of the year, going so far as to erect billboards on major roads showing a map of Sri Lanka free of the Tamil Tiger’s de facto state, with a simple promise: "2008."

But diplomats and other observers say the army is facing far more resistance than it expected, and government officials have begun appealing to Sri Lankans to have patience with the war effort.

The Tamil Tigers have fought since 1983 to create an independent homeland for ethnic Tamils, who have been marginalized for decades by successive governments controlled by the Sinhalese majority. More than 70,000 people have been killed in the violence.

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Associated Press writer Krishan Francis contributed to this report.