Thousands flee Sri Lankan fighting

The Red Cross says thousands of civilians are fleeing Sri Lanka's eastern battle zone on foot as shells fall nearby.

The rebels and the Army are duelling with artillery and mortar fire and small pockets of rebels continue firefights with troops in the eastern Muslim town of Mutur.

Aid workers say around 22,000 people are trapped by the fighting in the town.

"We just got information that they started moving," Yvonne Dunton, head of the Trincomalee office of the International Committee of the Red Cross, said.

"According to information in Mutur, everyone will leave, that's 6,000-7,000 families.

"The problem is they are being shelled with either mortars or artillery.

"We will send trucks and buses to pick them up along the road."

At least 20 civilians, 12 Tigers and one soldier were killed in fighting yesterday.

Dozens of badly wounded people, including several children, were ferried across Trincomalee harbour in gunboats to the town of the same name yesterday.

The hospital was overflowing with casualties.

The military says it has killed more than 70 rebels in the past week and the Tigers say they have the bodies of 40 soldiers ready to hand over.

But each side dismisses the other's claims.

"(The Tigers) are attacking our camps in the east. There is artillery and mortar fire," military spokesman Major Upali Rajapakse said.

"There are some civilians being injured.

"There are some Tigers in Mutur town. They are trying to move west into certain areas they control."

Other attacks

There have been other isolated attacks in the north-central district of Vavuniya and in the eastern district of Batticaloa, where a breakaway rebel faction has attacked a camp of the mainstream Tigers.

The fighting is the most intense and prolonged since a 2002 truce and diplomats and some military personnel say the civil war that began in 1983 appears to have resumed in all but name.

Over 800 people have been killed so far this year in escalating attacks and military clashes between the army and the Tigers.

The Tigers are furious at President Mahinda Rajapakse's outright rejection of their demand for a separate homeland for ethnic Tamils in the north and east.

Analysts say the island's protracted peace process is coming apart at the seams.

Norwegian special peace envoy Jon Hanssen-Bauer has flown to the island to discuss how to preserve a Nordic truce monitoring mission after Denmark, Finland and Sweden pulled their staff out in the face of a rebel ultimatum.

The Tigers gave monitors from European Union nations a September 1 deadline to quit the island after the bloc listed them as a terrorist organisation alongside the likes of Al Qaeda, reducing the 54-member mission to just 20 people.

- Reuters