SRI Lanka's Tamil Tiger rebels said 45 civilians were killed and 125 were injured today when army artillery fire hit a camp for internally displaced in the island's restive east. The military said the Tigers had been firing at military camps in the area since early morning, injuring five soldiers, and that troops had retaliated with artillery and mortar bomb fire, but had no details of any civilian casualties. A team of Nordic truce monitors was on the way to the site of the incident in Kathiraveli in the eastern district of Batticaloa, the latest in a litany of clashes amid a new chapter of the island's two-decade civil war. "They have hit a camp for displaced. So far 45 have died and 125 are injured – all civilians," S.Puleedevan, head of the Tigers' Peace Secretariat, said by satellite phone. Mr Puleedevan said he was visiting the northern town of Pooneryn, near the army-held Jaffna peninsula, with the head of the island's Nordic truce monitoring mission, and that the army was also firing artillery at them there.
The Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) and the Sri Lankan military have clashed repeatedly in the north and east in recent months, since peace talks collapsed in late October. The air force has repeatedly bombed Tiger areas since the talks failed. The military said the Tigers were firing at Government forces and using civilians as cover. "From morning they have been firing artillery at us," said military spokesman Brigadier Prasad Samarasinghe. "We have been retaliating with artillery and mortars. There's no army offensive going on."
"We have been asking people to leave Tiger areas and to come to our areas, and 594 people have done so," he added. "But some of them are being kept as human shields."
Well over 65,000 people have been killed in the conflict since 1983. The first peace talks in eight months collapsed in late October over a rebel demand that the government reopen the main northsouth highway which runs through Tiger territory.