Colombo, Friday
SRI Lanka Tamil rebels sank a navy gunboat with 40 servicemen aboard today as army reinforcements battled to rescue a strategic base under heavy attack from rebels who claim to have killed 500 soldiers, military officials said.
A rebel Sea Tiger naval wing suicide boat rammed the gunboat that was supporting troops landing to reinforce defenders of the besieged Mullaitivu army camp, they said.
It was not immediately clear how many casualties there were in the naval attack.
Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam claimed they killed 500 government soldiers when they overran the Mullaitivu camp, 175 miles from Colombo, in a pre-dawn assault yesterday.
The rebels said in a statement they lost 120 fighters in the assault.
Military spokesman Brigadier Sarath Munasinghe dismissed the rebel claim but said there was not yet any official word on army casualties a day after the attack.
``It is absurd,'' Munasinghe said at a news conference when asked about a broadcast by the Voice of Tigers radio, the rebel mouthpiece, that 500 troops had been killed.
``We do not know our casualties. We can tell only when reinforcements reach,'' he said.
The bulk of the more than 1000 troops manning Mullaitivu were still there, Munasinghe said, and the Tigers had not completely overrun the camp.
The Tigers were attacking army reinforcements landed by helicopter south of the base, Munasinghe said. It was unclear if rebels were still inside the base, he added.
Ten members of the special forces sent as reinforcements were accidentally killed when an air force bomb fell on their position, military officials said.
Munasinghe said the Tigers lost large numbers of fighters in the attack. A Tiger statement said more than 1000 fighters were involved in the assault, which smashed through the camp's defences.
The latest attacks come a week before the 13th anniversary of island-wide anti-Tamil riots that began the ethnic conflict in which the Government says more than 50,000 people have died.-Reuter
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