At least 32 Tamil Tiger rebels and five soldiers were killed in Sri Lanka's north today, the military said. The rebels said they had killed at least 26 soldiers and lost three of their own fighters.
A spokesman at the media centre for national security said sporadic clashes between the Army and the LTTE (the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam) broke out southwest of Adampan in Mannar district since morning.
"Intercepted LTTE communication has confirmed at least 20 LTTE cadres killed and over 30 wounded."
Three soldiers were killed and seven injured there while the military said four separate confrontations in Jaffna and Vavuniya killed another 12 Tamil Tiger rebels and two soldiers.
The military also said fighting in Jaffna and Vavuniya yesterday killed 11 Tamil Tigers.
The separatist Tigers, seeking to carve out an independent state in north and east Sri Lanka, said in an email statement that at least 26 soldiers were killed and more than 80 wounded in three confrontations in Mannar after an army attack.
"All the SLAF (Sri Lankan Armed Forces) teams were beaten back to their earlier fortifications," said Tamil Tiger rebel military spokesman Rasiah Ilanthiraiyan. He said three Tigers were killed.
There were no independent accounts of how many people were killed.
Analysts say both sides tend to overstate enemy losses and play down their own.
The military has vowed to wipe out the Tigers militarily. It is seeking to drive the rebels out of Mannar in the northwest after evicting them from vast swathes of jungle terrain they controlled in the east earlier this year.
More than 5,000 people have been killed in fighting between the military and LTTE fighters since early 2006 alone, taking the death toll since the war erupted in 1983 to around 70,000.