Sri Lankan forces fended off a rebel sea attack Monday and destroyed two Tamil Tiger boats as fighting raged in the nation's civil war, the military said. The military has forced the rebels out of much of their de facto state in the north, boxed them into a small patch of land along the coast and pushed them to the brink of defeat after more than 25 years of warfare, Associated Press reported. Early Monday, the rebels' small naval wing sent 15 vessels _ including four suicide craft _ into the water under cover of heavy mortar fire to attack Sri Lankan forces, the Defense Ministry said in a statement. Government troops destroyed two boats and damaged a third, the statement said. It did not elaborate on what happened to the rest of the vessels.
