The fierce clashes got under way at a time when President Mahinda Rajapaksa unveiled the budget proposals for 2008 in Parliament and vowed to wipe out terrorism completely in the island nation.
Fresh from their success in capturing the entire North-western coast, the Sri Lankan Air Force fighter jets on Sunday pounded bunkers of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam and seized hundreds of arms and ammunitions while recovering the bodies of two militants, officials said.
Over 26 Tamil Tiger rebels and one soldier were killed in fresh clashes between government troops and the guerrillas in the restive northern Sri Lanka, the military said on Monday.
A suspected Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam suicide bomber blew himself up when troops surrounded him in Sri Lanka's northern Jaffna peninsula, where two Tamil Tiger rebels and a soldier were killed in separate incidents, the army said in Colombo on Monday.
The LTTE triggered long-range artillery shelling at the Forward Defence Lines of the military at Muhamalai in the northern Jaffna peninsula.
The rebels attempted to breach the Muhamalai forward defence line in northern Lanka late on Wednesday night, leading to clashes between the Tigers and the army. While 14 rebels were gunned down by the security forces, seven were killed on Thursday.
Thirty-five Tiger rebels were killed in clashes with the army in Mannar, while two other rebels were killed in Jaffna when they attempted to breach a security forces' defence line.
The rebel Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) and the army exchanged fire across the Muhamalai-Nagarkovil frontline in the peninsula, the pro-rebel Tamilnet.com website said.
There was no word from the Tigers about the latest clashes or about the possible casualties on their side.\n\n
