Suspected Tamil Tiger rebels killed 15 people and wounded 23 in a mine attack on a crowded civilian bus today, the army said, while 29 rebels and seven soldiers were reported dead in fighting.
The explosion in the north-central district of Anuradhapura comes amid near daily land, sea and air attacks as a new chapter in a two-decade civil war grinds on with mounting attacks on civilians.
"There was a Claymore attack targeting a crowded civilian bus, 15 people killed and 23 wounded, the figures could change," said military Spokesman Brigadier Udaya Nanayakkara, blaming the attack on the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE).
The military said Tamil Tiger rebels exploded the roadside bomb targeting the bus 45 kilometres (28 miles) from the town of Anuradhapura, in north central Sri Lanka.
The military first said 25 people had been wounded. Earlier, the military said reported clashes in the northwestern district of Mannar, northern district of Vavuniya and northern Jaffna peninsula, saying 29 rebels were killed.
"Two confrontations in Mannar killed 13 terrorists and another two different attacks in Vavuniya and Jaffna killed 16 more terrorists," said a spokesman at the Media Centre for National Security.
The military said a Tamil Tiger attack on a military patrol killed three soldiers, while a mine explosion killed four service personnel and wounded two in Vavuniya. The separatist Tigers, who are seeking to carve out an independent state in north and east Sri Lanka, were not immediately available for comment. There were no independent accounts of how many people were killed or what had happened in the clashes.
Analysts say both sides tend to overstate enemy losses and play down their own. The military has vowed to wipe out the Tigers militarily, and is seeking to drive the rebels out of Mannar 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 Tiger fighters since early 2006 alone, taking the death toll since the war erupted in 1983 to around 70,000.