The New Nation - Internet Edition

AFP, Colombo

Security forces fought pitched battles with the Tamil Tigers and took control of more rebel defences near their political capital in northern Sri Lanka, the defence ministry said on Friday.

Troops mounted three frontal assaults against the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) in the main battle for Kilinochchi, the de facto capital of the rebels, on Thursday, the ministry said.

The defence ministry has stopped releasing casualty details of its own troops, but said security forces recovered the bodies of two Tiger rebels killed in Thursday's clashes.

There was no immediate comment from the Tigers, but they tacitly admitted that security forces had breached the main line of defence in the far north of the island.

The military said government forces smashed a key Tamil Tiger defence line at Muhamalai in the far north and also seized an airfield, putting new pressure on the shrinking jungle mini-state.

Government troops took a near five-kilometre (three-mile) fortified bunker line from the LTTE on the Jaffna peninsula after five days of fierce fighting, the defence ministry said.

"The Sri Lanka army soldiers who were sent on offensive mission into the no-go zone in Kilali and Muhamalai were trained for a 'do-or-die mission,'" the pro-rebel Tamilnet.com website reported.

It said that 130 government soldiers were killed and another 450 wounded in this week's fighting.

Sri Lankan authorities, who pulled out of a Norwegian-brokered truce with the rebels at the start of the year, have been on the offensive against the Tigers for several months.