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Lankan troops push into rebel territory: 43 killed

AP, AFP, Colombo
Sri Lankan soldiers launched a predawn attack on Tamil separatists in the embattled north yesterday, killing 15 rebels, while other battles in the region left 27 rebels and one soldier dead, said the military.
The civil war on the Indian Ocean island has escalated in recent months, with the military stepping up ground assaults and airstrikes after the government pledged to capture rebel-held territory and crush the insurgents.
In the latest offensive, army troops pushed into the rebel territory across a defence line in the village of Kilali on the Jaffna peninsula early Sunday and attacked rebel bunkers, said military spokesman Brig Udaya Nanayakkara.
He said soldiers killed 15 guerrillas before retreating to their bunkers, without suffering casualties.
Fighting, meanwhile, continued throughout Saturday along the front lines in Vavuniya, Mullaitivu,
Jaffna and Welioya regions bordering the rebels' de fact state, Nanayakkara said.
Scattered battles in Vavuniya killed 16 rebels and one soldier while three rebels died in Mullaitivu. Separate clashes killed five insurgents in Welioya and Jaffna.
There was no immediate word from the Tigers about the military's latest claims, but the guerrillas said an air strike inside their territory on Saturday killed or wounded civilians.
"Two civilians, including a school teacher, were killed, four more civilians were injured... when (the) Sri Lanka air force bombed Iranaipalai,” the Tigers said.
The military has not commented on theTiger claims, but the defence ministry said 27 guerrillas and a government soldier were killed in other fighting in the northern parts of the country in fresh fighting since Saturday.
Both sides routinely exaggerate enemy casualties and underreport
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their own. Independent verification of the fighting is not possible because journalists arc barred from the war zone.
The rebels have been fighting for an independent state in tne north and cast since 1983, following decades of marginalisation of ethnic Tamils by governments dominated by the Sinhalese majority. The fighting has escalated in recent months after the government vowed to crush the rebels by the end of theyear.
More than 70,000 people have been killed in the conflict.
The government has poured a record 1.5 billion dollars into this year's war efforts and troops are now concentrating on dismantling the LITE'S de facto state in the north.
Colombo pulled out of a truce with the LITE in January, saying it had die upper hand in the long-running conflict that has claimed tens of thousands of lives since 1972.