Sri Lankan soldiers killed four Tamil Tiger rebels in two separate clashes in the volatile north on Friday, the military said, while in the east, troops found the bodies of 15 rebels killed in battles during the week.
The insurgents attacked an army foot patrol near Muhamalai, a border post dividing government and rebel-held areas in Jaffna peninsula early Friday, said Lt. Col. Upali Rajapakse, a senior military official.
He said soldiers repulsed the attack by rebels who had infiltrated government-held areas and later found the bodies of two rebels.
Also Friday, troops fired at insurgents near Point Pedro town in Jaffna, triggering a pre-dawn clash, Rajapakse said. Two rebel bodies were found later. The army did not suffer casualties, he said.
There was no immediate comment from the rebels.
The military said soldiers found the bodies of 15 rebels and nearly a hundred anti-personnel mines when searching territory captured from the guerrillas this week.
That brings the estimated rebel death toll to 45 in Tuesday's clashes in the Thoppigala area between the army and the separatist Tamil Tigers, an official at the Defense Ministry information center said.
Sri Lankan soldiers have driven out the guerrillas from many of their eastern bases and Thoppigala is believed to be their last stronghold.
The violence comes amid a worsening separatist conflict in Sri Lanka that has killed more than 5,000 people since December 2005, rendering a five-year-old Norway-brokered cease-fire useless.
Even though the two sides have largely ignored the cease-fire as battles between the two escalate, neither side has officially withdrawn from the agreement.
Tamil Tiger rebels have fought the government since 1983 to carve out an independent homeland for the country's ethnic Tamil minority who have suffered decades of discrimination by successive ethnic Sinhalese-controlled governments.
More than 70,000 people have been killed in more than two-decades of violence.
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