More than 80 Tamil rebels killed in clashes

Sri Lankan troops killed up to 44 Tamil rebels in clashes in the country’s north and east while destroying three small camps in the insurgents’ last eastern stronghold, the military said today.

The clashes came after the navy said it fought off a rebel sea attack off the northern Jaffna peninsula yesterday, killing an additional 40 separatists, adding to the bloody death toll of more than two-decades of conflict in the Indian Ocean island.

The military today said it had recovered 25 to 30 bodies after destroying three “satellite camps” in the eastern Thoppigala region overnight.

“We are now clearing mines in the area,” military spokesman Brig Prasad Samarasinghe said.

The Tamil Tiger rebels, primarily based in the north, have their sole remaining eastern stronghold in the Thoppigala region, where the military has recently launched a major push to drive them out, capturing several of their encampments.

Fierce ground battles, air strikes and assassinations have killed some 5,000 people in Sri Lanka since December 2005 when violence flared anew despite a 2002 Norway-brokered ceasefire.