Sri Lankan warplanes bombed a suspected Tamil Tiger training camp as the two sides exchanged artillery attacks across a de facto front line in the island's north, the defence ministry said on Wednesday.
COLOMBO: Sri Lankan warplanes bombed a suspected Tamil Tiger training camp as the two sides exchanged artillery attacks across a de facto front line in the island's north, the defence ministry said on Wednesday.
Israeli-built jets pounded positions held by the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam in Mannar on Tuesday, the ministry said, adding that the guerrillas had sustained "heavy damage".
However, Tiger rebels fired artillery across the de facto front line in the Jaffna peninsula, killing a soldier and wounding four others, the ministry said.
"Troops retaliated with artillery and small arms, inflicting heavy damage on the enemy," the ministry said.
There was no immediate reaction from the Tigers, but the pro-rebel Tamilnet.com web site said the military had stepped up artillery attacks across the front lines late on Tuesday.
It said the new head of Sri Lanka's truce monitoring mission, Lars Solvberg, was due to meet with the Tiger leadership in the rebel-held town of Kilinochchi on Wednesday to discuss the "ground situation".
Solvberg, a former Norwegian army chief who leads a 30-strong group of monitors, has said that both sides were responsible for breaking the truce arranged and put in place by Oslo in February 2002.
Sri Lanka's neighbour India on Tuesday called for "special efforts" to end the upsurge of violence on the island and said New Delhi supported a political settlement that would not break up the country.
"We believe that today more than ever before special efforts are required to strengthen the ceasefire," Youth Affairs and Sports Minister Mani Shankar Aiyar said late on Tuesday at a public lecture.
Aiyar said India supported moves to put together a "devolution package that could command consensus among the major political parties, restore ethnic harmony and expeditiously address the legitimate aspirations of all sections of Sri Lankan society."
Over the past three decades, more than 60,000 people have been killed in the separatist conflict between the Colombo government and the LTTE.
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