Clashes with Sri Lankan navy kill 7 Tamil Tiger guerrillas, military says

Two separate battles with the Sri Lankan navy left seven Tamil Tiger rebels dead, the military said Sunday, as troops and guerrillas traded artillery fire across the military's northern defense line. Three rebels were killed Saturday evening on Kayts Island west of northern Sri Lanka's Jaffna peninsula after sailors were deployed there, an official at the Media Center for National Security said on condition of anonymity, citing policy. The navy operation followed an attempted raid Friday by a Tiger vessel that was destroyed trying to enter a naval base near the island, he said. Four guerrillas died in the sea battle and two bodies were recovered, the official said. The attempted infiltration prompted the navy to search Kayts Island on Saturday.

On the Jaffna peninsula, a grenade hurled at a military checkpoint wounded a soldier and four civilians, said military spokesman Brig. Prasad Samarasinghe. Also in Jaffna, army and Tamil Tiger rebels exchanged artillery and mortar fire across the northern defense line separating the government and rebels, Samarasinghe said. No casualties were reported. The fighting came as Norwegian envoy Jon Hanssen-Bauer prepared to visit Sri Lanka on Monday for talks with government and Tiger leaders on the progress of the country's peace process. Violence in recent months has killed more than 1,000 combatants and civilians in the country's northeast. A 2002 Norway-brokered cease-fire exists now only on paper.

On Saturday, elite Sri Lankan police forces killed 11 rebels in a pre-emptive attack in the east, while a bomb blast killed three policemen in the northwest. The Tigers - formally called the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam - have fought the government since 1983 to create a separate state for ethnic minority Tamils following decades of discrimination by the majority Sinhalese-dominated state. More than 66,000 people have been killed in the conflict.