Sri Lankan troops killed at least 50 Tamil Tiger rebels in a four-day battle for a bottleneck on the Jaffna Peninsula, the military said today.
Ten soldiers were killed and 30 wounded in the battle for the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam's (LTTE) forward defence line at Muhumalai, where both sides have been in a standoff for years, a military spokesman said.
"Intercepted Tiger communications says about 50 terrorists were killed in the past four days," he said.
The rebels had no immediate comment and no independent confirmation was available.
The 8km (five mile) stretch the army said it captured spans the narrow thread of land linking the army-held northern Jaffna Peninsula to the rest of the Indian Ocean island nation.
Earlier battles there have had high casualties rates because of the heavy concentration of artillery and land mines and close quarters the land engenders.
More than 200 soldiers and rebels died in fighting there in April, four months after the government scrapped an ill-observed 2002 ceasefire and vowed to wipe the Tigers out.
Reuters