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Colombo: Heavy fighting in Sri Lanka's far north killed 52 Tamil Tiger rebels and 38 soldiers and hundreds wounded when Sri Lankan security forces launched an offensive against Tamil Tiger rebels on Thursday, the defence ministry said.
Fighting between government forces and the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam has intensified since the government formally pulled out of a 6-year-old ceasefire pact in January, though a renewed civil war has been raging since 2006.
"LTTE terrorists came and attacked our forward line this morning, we have retaliated and captured about 400 to 500 metres of LTTE area in Muhamalai," said spokesman Brigadier Udayananayakkara of the fighting in the northern Jaffna Peninsula.
Attack repulsed
A ministry spokesman said in addition to the deaths, 84 soldiers were seriously wounded when they tried to advance into territory held by the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) in the northern Jaffna peninsula.
The LTTE said they captured the bodies of 30 government soldiers. The pro-rebel Tamilnet.com website quoted an unnamed army source as saying that security forces lost 150 men.
The Tigers did not report their own casualties.
The Tigers, fighting for an independent state in the north and east, earlier said in an emailed statement that they had repulsed another government assault in Jaffna on Tuesday.
"At Muhamalai front in Jaffna, heavy clashes erupted when the SLA battle units made an attempt to overrun LTTE fortifications," said Tamil Tiger rebel military spokesman Rasiah Ilanthiraiyan.
President's pledge
"The SLA teams were beaten back in a 30-minute repulse by the valiant LTTE defenders."
Analysts say both the government and rebels often inflate enemy death tolls and play down their own losses.
The reports are rarely possible to verify independently. President Mahinda Rajapakse's government has pledged to destroy the Tigers militarily.
After driving the rebels from the east, the armed forces are focusing on Tiger-held areas in north, intensifying fighting in the civil war that has killed an estimated 70,000 people since 1983. Thousands have been killed in recent months.
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