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COLOMBO - Sri Lankan troops killed at least 20 Tamil Tiger rebels in a gunbattle in the island's restive east today, the military said, as fighting that has displaced more than 100,000 civilians in the area flared.
Troops confronted a group of Tigers in the eastern district of Batticaloa, where the military has mounted an offensive to drive the rebels from territory that they control under the terms of a battered 2002 ceasefire pact.
One soldier was also killed in the clash, while two elite police commandos were killed in a Claymore mine ambush further south in the district of Ampara.
"Forceful gunfire of troops killed at least 20 terrorists and injured many others," the Media Centre for National Security said in a statement.
The Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) were not immediately available for comment.
Schools are being turned into makeshift refugee camps in eastern Sri Lanka to cope with the influx of more than 40,000 civilians who have fled fighting between the army and Tamil Tigers in recent days.
The exodus is piling further strain on a district the United Nations says has already some 88,000 people displaced by fighting in recent months, and where refugee camps are already full.
Dozens of people have been killed in a series of clashes and attacks as the foes ignore repeated calls from the international community to halt a new chapter in a two-decade civil war that has killed around 68,000 people since 1983.
The Tigers have warned of a bloodbath if the international community fails to persuade the military to halt a declared plan to entirely wipe them out militarily, and analysts fear the conflict will deepen.
The Tigers say they are fighting for an independent state for minority Tamils in north and east Sri Lanka which President Mahinda Rajapakse has rejected. Rights groups are alarmed at a surge in abuses, kidnappings and extrajudicial killings blamed on both sides.
- REUTERS
