Sri Lanka's Tamil Tigers bomb military in north
(Adds ground fighting details)
By Ranga Sirilal
COLOMBO, April 27 (Reuters) - Tamil Tiger light aircraft bombed a Sri Lankan military position in the north of the island on Sunday in the rebels' first air raid in nearly six months, the military said.
It also said that in ground fighting, 48 people died, most of them rebels.
The Tigers, fighting for an independent state in the north and east, were not immediately available for comment.
The Sri Lankan military and the Tamil Tigers are locked in a new chapter of a bloody civil war that has killed thousands in recent months.
"At about 1:35 a.m. (1905 GMT Saturday) they came and dropped three bombs on the Welioya Forward Defence line. Nobody was hurt and no damage to any property," a military spokesman said of the rebel air raid on the northern district of Polonnaruwa.
The rebels' last air strike was in October on an air force base in Anuradhapura.
Fighting between government forces and the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) has intensified since the government formally pulled out of a six-year-old ceasefire pact in January, though a renewed civil war has been in progress since 2006.
The military said fresh confrontations with the rebels had killed 28 Tamil Tiger rebels, and seven soldiers had died and one was missing in fighting in Welioya on Saturday.
It also said fighting in northern districts of Jaffna, Vavuniya and Mannar on Saturday killed 13 Tamil Tiger rebels.
Pro-Tamil Tiger rebel web site www.tamilnet.com said heavy fighting erupted in the Welioya area, pitting the Tigers against a "large-scale offensive" by the army.
A suspected rebel bomb blast on a bus near the capital Colombo in the evening rush hour killed 26 people on Friday.
Dozens of rebel fighters and government troops were killed this week in fighting on the Jaffna Peninsula in the far north.
After driving the rebels from the east, the armed forces are focusing on Tiger-held areas in north, intensifying fighting in the war that has killed an estimated 70,000 people since 1983.
While the military has the upper hand in the latest phase of the war, analysts see no clear final winner. (edited by Richard Meares)
