Sri Lanka's army launched a new push into Tamil Tiger rebel territory in the east yesterday, while in the besieged north an air force transport plane ferried in munitions and took out the dead. At least 11 soldiers were killed in Monday's fighting. Tiger rebels claimed that 20 civilians died in army artillery strikes.Hundreds have been killed in violence this month, the worst fighting since a 2002 truce, but so far the front lines have barely moved. But the government says it wants the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) out of the Sampur area overlooking Trincomalee harbour. "We have commenced a small operation to seize the area around Selvanagar, towards Sampur, around our army camp" said an army spokesman. "We don't have any intention of clearing up to Sampur. We have cleared some areas where LTTE were holding the ground."
The hospital in the nearby town of Kantale said the bodies of four dead soldiers had been received along with some 20 wounded. More than 65,000 people have died in two decades of civil war, well over 1,000 in the last year. Most of the fighting has been in the island's north and east, where the minority Tamils mostly live, but there have also been bomb blasts and assassinations in the capital, Colombo. The Tigers have used the Sampur area which includes the southern edge of Trincomalee harbour entrance to shell the naval base and launch attacks on military supply convoys to Jaffna, on the northern tip of the island. The government says it can no longer accept that.