Heavy weekend fighting between government troops and Tamil separatists in Sri Lanka's war-ravaged northern region left 35 rebels and eight soldiers dead, the military said yesterday.

The latest battles erupted Saturday along the front lines in the Mannar and Welioya regions, the military said.

In the worst fighting, soldiers killed 13 Tamil rebels in Janakapura in Welioya, said a defence ministry official who spoke on condition of anonymity. Four soldiers were killed and six soldiers and 26 rebels were wounded, he said.

Sporadic fighting in the northern Mannar district killed 18 rebels and one soldier, the official said, adding that six soldiers and six

rebels were wounded in that fighting.

Separate fighting in Welioya left four rebels and three soldiers dead, he said.

Rebel spokesman Rasiah Ilanthirayan was not immediately available for comment Saturday.

It was not possible to independently verify the military's claims because the media are banned from the northern jungles where much of the fighting takes place. Both sides commonly exaggerate their enemy's casualties while underplaying their own.

The government has pledged to capture the rebels' de facto state in the north and crush them by the end of the year. But diplomats and other observers say the army is facing more resistance than expected.

Meanwhile, Sri Lanka's military' Sunday denied a report saying more than nine times as many of its soldiers have been killed in clashes with Tamil rebels in 2007 than officially stated.

The English-language Sunday Times said Sri Lanka's top army general Sarath Fonseka told a briefing of military commanders last week that 2,000 troops were killed and 4,000 injured during in 2007, compared to an official tally of 213 dead and 829 injured.

"I myself was not present at that meeting. But we did not have so many casualty figures last year," army spokesman Brigadier Udaya Nanayakkara told AFP in refuting the newspaper story.

Fonseka, who was severely injured by a Tamil rebel suicide bomber in April 2006, told the military commanders that security forces killed 5,000 Tiger cadres last year, the Sunday Times said

The military had earlier estimated the Tigers' strength between 3,000 and 5,000 combat ants and announced at the start of 2008 that they would be able to wipe out the rebels within six months.

According to the military, fighting since January 2008 killed 3,359 rebels and 246 soldiers died during the same period. The figure comes on top of military claims that 2,752 Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) cadres were killed in 2007, which would total 6,111 rebels dead in the past 16 months.

Fighting has escalated along the northern front lines since the government withdrew from a long-ignored ceasefire in January.

The Tirmil Tigers have been fighting since 1983 for an independent homeland for minority ethnic Tamils, who have been marginalized for decades by governments dominated by the Sinhalese majority. More than 70,000 people have been killed in the fighting.