Sri Lankan troops shot dead more than a dozen child soldiers during a commando-style operation in the Jaffna peninsula, while seven rebels were captured alive, the defense ministry said Sunday.
Troops recovered the bodies of 18 members of the separatist Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) at Navatkuli in the Jaffna peninsula on Saturday and 14 of them were girls, the ministry said in a statement.
"We had a bait for the Tigers at Navatkuli," ministry spokesman Sanath Karunaratne said. "They swallowed it and we got them. There were no civilians in the area, and it is clear Tigers had deployed child soldiers."
In Friday's fighting in the same region, the LTTE had admitted losing 124 of their cadres, the defense ministry said quoting intercepts of rebel radio transmissions.
There was no immediate reaction from the rebels to military claims of guerrilla casualties.
The ministry said the bodies of 51 Tigers killed in Friday's battle were recovered by troops but only 30 bodies were in a proper condition to be returned to the LTTE through the International Committee of the Red Cross.
The ministry had placed its own losses in two days of fighting at 25 soldiers killed and 47 wounded.
The upsurge in fighting came as the Tigers offered a unilateral Christmas truce and said they expected the military to reciprocate their gesture in a bid to clear the way for peace talks.
However, the government flatly rejected the rebel offer and said there will be no let up in military action until the guerrillas start talks in line with Norwegian initiative to bring the warring sides to the peace negotiating table -- COLOMBO (AFP)
© 2000 Al Bawaba (www.albawaba.com)
