New front opens in Lanka after big military losses

Troops and the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) blamed each other for the new flareup in the eastern district of Ampara, which followed heavy fighting on the Jaffna peninsula on Wednesday.

"LTTE terrorists launched artillery and mortar shells towards the police Special Task Force (STF) defences," at Kandjikudiaru in Ampara, the defence ministry said.

"The Liberation Tigers fighters were engaged in defensive clashes with the STF troopers, according to the Tiger political chief of Ampara district," the pro-rebel Tamilnet.-com website said.

There were no reports of casualties in the overnight artillery exchanges, which began late Thursday.

The LTTE had Thursday handed over 74 bodies of government soldiers killed in the Jaffna battle. Another soldier's body was returned Friday, raising the death toll among troops to 130.

The army casualties in Wednesday's battle were the worst suffered by troops in a single battle since a Norwegian-brokered truce agreed in February 2002.

The military claimed it killed over 200 Tigers but the guerrillas said they lost 22 men, revising up their earlier claim of 10 dead.

"The (main) handover took place yesterday evening at 8 p.m. local time at Omantai checkpoint on the A-9 road," said the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), which acted as intermediary.

Omantai, 260km north of Colombo, marks the de facto border separating government and rebel-held territory and lies just north of Vavuniya.

An explosion in the government-held town killed a soldier and wounded two more Friday, police said, blaming the LTTE. Unidentified gunmen also shot dead two men in Vavuniya.

US Assistant Secretary of State Richard Boucher and two other foreign envoys will visit Sri Lanka next week to seek a halt to a rash of fierce fighting that threatens to derail peace talks, officials said on Friday.

Boucher's visit, due to start Thursday, comes as the government and Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) fight nearly daily artillery battles in the island's far north.

"He is coming to show support for the peace talks and call for an immediate cessation of hostilities," an official at the US embassy in Colombo said.

The heavy bloodshed cast a shadow over peace talks planned to be held in Switzerland in late October. Britain, Sri Lanka's former colonial power, urged both sides to resume negotiations.

"Our firm view is that dialogue, not violence, is the only viable route to resolving the conflict," the British High Commission said in its annual human rights report released Thursday.

The report also accused both the government and the Tamil Tigers of killing civilians.

Despite the ongoing violence, diplomats said Norway, the top peace broker in Sri Lanka, was planning to dispatch special envoy Jon Hanssen-Bauer Tuesday to work out details for the peace talks set for October 28 and 29.