| Sri Lankan soldiers killed twelve Tamil Tiger rebels in clashes in the north of the island, the military said on Saturday, adding it lost four of its men in the fighting. Three civilians were also killed in a landmine blast in the eastern district of Batticaloa, blamed on the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) fighting for a separate homeland for minority ethnic Tamils. The clashes follow a new offensive launched by the Sri Lankan military to drive out the rebels from the northwest Mannar area, after evicting them from jungles in the east of the island. “The military killed five terrorists when the army observed a gathering ahead of the forward defence line in Jaffna and attacked them,” said a spokesman for the Media Centre for National Security. Soldiers killed another two rebels who were trying to infiltrate a defence line in Jaffna in the north on Friday, he said. The military also said they killed five rebels in a confrontation in the northern district of Vavuniya on Friday, in which three soldiers were also killed. “A soldier was killed and six injured from an explosion while they were searching an abandoned vehicle in the restive eastern district of Batticaloa,” the spokesman said. The LTTE were not immediately available for comment. About 70,000 people have been killed since the civil war erupted in 1983 and hundreds of thousands are displaced. |