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Fighting

escalates

in Sri Lanka

COLOMBO: Security forces killed nine more Tamil Tiger rebels in a fresh battle as fighting escalated across Sri Lanka's embattled northern and eastern regions, officials here said on Saturday.

Army troops shot dead the nine members of the separatist Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) in the Walikamam sector of the Jaffna peninsula on Friday, hours after the Tigers killed 18 police commandos in the east of the country.

Defence sources said a total of 95 automatic assault rifles were recovered from nearly 150 LTTE men and women killed in the Walikamam sector in the past one week.

"We have sorted out the Tigers who were still hiding in Walikamam," chief military spokesman Sarath Munasinghe said. The military wrested control of Walikamam after nearly 50 days of fighting ending in December.

In a statement sent here from its London office, the LTTE said it killed seven soldiers in a surprise attack against security forces at Walikamam. It gave no other details.

The LTTE also said it killed 16 Special Task Force (STF) commandos in an ambush in the eastern district of Ampara on Friday, adding that it had capturing a large haul of arms and ammunition from the victims.

"Sixteen STF soldiers were killed on the spot and many others escaped with injuries in this attack which lasted for 20 minutes," the LTTE statement said. However, the military admitted losing 18 STF men and said eight were wounded.

The defence ministry in a statement said that MI-24 helicopter gun ships were called in to attack the Tigers who ambushed the STF troops, but did not say if there had been any rebel casualties.

The attack on the STF came despite the authorities alerting troops in the island's east to fresh Tiger attacks ahead of a planned military onslaught against the LTTE in the north of the country.-AFP