FACTBOX: Facts about Sri Lanka's Tamil Tiger air wing

(Reuters) - Tamil Tiger rebels on Tuesday bombed a northern military camp and a power station in the Sri Lankan capital Colombo in quick succession, setting the latter ablaze and injuring a soldier, the military said.

The raids are the eighth and ninth carried out by the "Air Tigers," known in the Tamil language as Vaanpuligal, since they launched their first attack in March 2007.

Here are some facts about the Air Tigers:

* Security experts say the ramshackle force of propeller-driven single-engine planes flown by the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) may be the only combat air fleet operated by an insurgent group or any group on U.S. and EU terrorism lists. The LTTE is on both.

* In March 2007 a single aircraft dropped homemade bombs on a barracks in an air force base next to the international airport in Colombo, killing three airmen and wounding 16.

* On September 9 this year, a rebel aircraft bombed a military base in Vavuniya, just south of the front lines, in conjunction with a ground attack by "Black Tiger" suicide fighters that killed at least 25. Two Indian radar operators were wounded in the bombing, prompted furious denials from Colombo and New Delhi about their presence there.

* After the September 9 attack, the air force said it had shot the aircraft down, which the rebels denied. No evidence has been made public by either side.

* Five other attacks include: an April 2007 attack that inflicted minor damage Colombo oil storage facilities; another April 2007 attack on an airbase in northern Jaffna that killed six soldiers in combination with artillery fire; an October 2007 attack on an airbase in Anuradhapura in north-central Sri Lanka that killed nine and wounded 20; an April 2008 run at a military forward operations base in Welioya that damaged nothing; and an August 26 attack on the navy base at the eastern port of Trincomalee that wounded 10 sailors.

* Before the September 9 attack, Sri Lanka's military said the Tigers were flying three single-engine Zlin-143 light aircraft, believed smuggled onto the Indian Ocean island nation in pieces and reassembled.

* The Zlin-143 has a small profile that makes it easy to fly at a low level to avoid radar detection. Since the military has put up anti-aircraft radar and stepped up combat air patrols, the rebels have usually kept their flights short. That has enabled them to strike and land in camouflaged jungle hideouts before vastly superior air force jets can intercept them.

(Compiled by Bryson Hull, Colombo Newsroom)