By Xinhua
Colombo : The Sri Lankan military Tuesday said they killed five Tamil rebels in an attack in the northern part of the country.
The Media Centre for National Security said in a statement that the troops launched an attack on three bunkers of LTTE (Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam) at Kilali in the Jaffna peninsula around 5 a.m. local time.
Two rebels’ bunkers were destroyed, the statement said, adding that five rebels were killed in the confrontation. There was no casualty for the troops, said the statement.
Fighting between the two sides has been a daily occurrence in the north after the government claimed in July that the Eastern Province was free of rebels.
Claiming discrimination at the hands of the Sinhala majority, the LTTE has been fighting against the government since the mid-1980s to establish a separate homeland for the minority Tamils in the northern and eastern region of the country.
More than 5,000 people have been killed in the fresh wave of violence since the LTTE withdrew from a Norwegian brokered ceasefire with the government in 2005.