Sri Lanka: A national security alert was declared in Sri Lanka yesterday after a mine attack, blamed on Tamil Tiger rebels fighting for an independent homeland, killed three policemen following a weekend of fierce land and sea battles that left more than 50 people dead.
Weeks of continuing hostilities between the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) and government forces is severely straining the 2002 ceasefire, threatening to plunge the island republic back into civil war that has claimed almost 70,000 lives since the early 1980s.
The Tamils, who constitute about 12 per cent of the island's population of 20 million, claim discrimination at the hands of the majority Sinhalese.
Officials in the capital, Colombo, said the constables died when a police water tanker was blown up by a Claymore mine in the north-central district of Anuradhapura yesterday.
Tamil Tiger rebels had vowed to retaliate against government forces who mounted a massive offensive against them on Saturday, even using helicopter gunships in the firefight spread some 185km (115 miles) along the northwest coast.
The defence ministry said the navy and the air force beat back the Tiger offensive by sinking eight Tiger craft and killing 30 cadres. The LTTE has a fiercely professional naval force called the Sea Tigers.
The rebels, however, denied government assertions, claiming that only two LTTE members had been wounded in the fight.
Independent verification of casualties in Sri Lanka's conflict has been difficult, if not impossible, for decades. Both sides tend to minimize their losses while exaggerating those of their rivals.
Six civilians were also killed in the crossfire on Saturday while 28 were admitted to hospital with gunshot and shrapnel injuries. Three more sailors were killed when their boat capsized while rushing to the aid of colleagues.
Earlier, fighter jets bombed Tiger positions on Thursday and Friday as a "deterrent" against more attacks following the bombing of an overcrowded bus by the rebels in northern Sri Lanka in which 64 people, many of them women and children, were killed.
The leader of the LTTE's political wing, SP Thamilselvan, has denied government charges of being involved in the bus attack.
But in the unending tit-for-tat allegations and counter-allegations, the military has brushed aside rebel denials and executed air and artillery strikes against their positions in the north and east of the island which they control.
The Tigers accused the military of lobbing a grenade inside a Catholic church on Saturday, killing an elderly woman and wounding 45 in the northwestern Mannar district. The defence ministry denied the allegation.
International condemnation of last week's bus attack followed calls for both the Tigers and the Sri Lankan government to return to the negotiating table but neither side is listening, holding the other responsible for fomenting hostilities.
The European Union, which last month banned the LTTE as a terrorist organisation, has called on both sides to negotiate a settlement before the war of attrition exacerbates into full-blown hostilities.
More than 500 people including rebels and soldiers have died since April in what many diplomats refer to as the island's "undeclared war".
Norway, engaged for years in trying to broker a peace agreement, failed last week to persuade the sides to kick-start negotiations after talks in Geneva were called off a few months ago.