Sri Lankan forces attacked rebel boats and bunkers with artillery and ground assaults and Tamil separatists fought back with mortar fire and bomb attacks in a wave of violence that killed 30 rebels and five government troops, the military said Friday, according to AP. Fighting has escalated in recent weeks because of a government offensive deep into the jungles of northern Sri Lanka, where the Tamil Tigers control a de facto state. The government has pledged to crush the rebel group by the end of the year. In new fighting Thursday, troops destroyed two rebel boats off the island nation's coast in an artillery attack, the military said. Government forces also destroyed five bunkers in the Jaffna and Welioya regions, the military said in a statement. In the worst of the fighting, government troops killed 12 rebels and lost one soldier in battles across the Kilinochchi region, in the rebels' heartland, the military said. A second soldier was killed in a booby trap, it said. Fighting in Welioya, Jaffna and Vavuniya killed another 18 rebels and two soldiers, one of whom was killed in a mortar attack, the military said. Meanwhile, a member of an elite government security force was killed by a rebel bomb in the eastern region of Batticaloa, which the government seized from the rebels last year.
