By Xinhua,
Colombo : A sea battle in the Sri Lankan northern Jaffna peninsula in the early hours of Saturday has killed some 14 Tamil Tiger rebels, defense officials said.
“We spotted a cluster of LTTE (Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam) boats off Nagarkovil at 6 a.m. (0030 GMT) and destroyed six of them,” Navy spokesman D. K. P. Dassanayake said.
He said the Navy believed that 14 rebels were killed and 16 others injured in the clash.
Four sailors were also injured in the battle.
Meanwhile military spokesman Udaya Nanayakkara said that heavy fighting erupted throughout Friday in the northern areas of Kilinochchi, Jaffna and Welioya regions with severe damage caused to the rebels.
Several rebel bunkers were either destroyed or captured in the clashes.
Kilinochchi’s Akkarayankulam, Nachchimunai and Kokavil areas saw heavy clashes during which the military had delivered severe blows on the rebels.
Police spokesman Ranjith Gunasekera said that three bodies of dead rebels were to be handed over to the International Committee of the Red Cross on Saturday.
The Sri Lankan government is hopeful that the present military campaign in the north would soon see an end halting the LTTE’s over three-decade-old armed campaign to create a separate homeland for the minority Tamil community.
More than 70,000 people have been killed in the conflict.