Sri Lanka pushed on with an offensive today to seize a waterway from Tamil Tiger rebels.
The operation comes amid a call from the United Nations for an independent inquiry into the killing of 17 aid workers in the midst of the fighting.
The military said there was intermittent artillery and mortar fire with the Tigers as the fighting, the worst since a 2002 ceasefire, entered a 17th day. But the army said the intensity was far lower than previous days.
Army trucks towed fresh heavy gun parts towards the battle zone after an army camp was wrecked overnight when an artillery gun accidentally exploded, igniting an arms dump.
The government says it will not halt operations until it controls a disputed sluice and an irrigation reservoir that feeds it. The Tigers say the land is theirs and that continued army attacks are an effective declaration of war.
Fighting over the water, which feeds farms in government territory, began late last month, effectively ending the tenuous truce between the Tigers and the government.
Army artillery and air force jets pounded rebel positions in the east yesterday as ambulances ferried dozens of wounded troops to hospital and the military moved tanks, munitions and fresh soldiers to the battlefront.
The Tigers said more than 50 civilians were killed and 200 wounded in their territory from army shelling. Doctors said six troops were killed and more than 50 wounded during an attempted push to capture the sluice.
The Tigers have long demanded a separate homeland for ethnic Tamils in the north and east, but President Mahinda Rajapakse has ruled this out. The rebels say any return to stalled peace talks is a distant prospect.
Aid groups accuse the government of forcing civilians to flee Tiger areas by shelling and deliberately blocking aid.