Ethnic Tamil rebels attacked a military convoy in northern Sri Lanka Friday, killing 13 navy troops in the worst such incident since a 2002 cease-fire, the Sri Lankan military announced. The attack was the latest in an escalating series of clashes that have raised fears of return to civil war.

Military officials in Colombo, the Sri Lankan capital, said the sailors were traveling by bus and truck in the northern district of Mannar when rebels from Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam, or LTTE, attacked the convoy with claymore fragmentation grenades, assault rifles and rocket-propelled grenades.

"They laid a deliberate ambush," an army spokesman told Reuters. "It was very well carried out."

An LTTE spokesman, Daya Master, told the Associated Press from the rebel stronghold of Kilinochchi that the group had "no connection whatsoever" to the attack on the government forces. But analysts were skeptical of the group's claims, noting that the LTTE has often denied responsibility for its actions in the past.

Friday's attack came just a day after three Sri Lankan sailors died in a sea battle between rebel and government naval vessels off the northern coast. Although the two sides signed a cease-fire in February 2002, the agreement has lately come under intense pressure, with about 30 soldiers killed in rebel attacks since the beginning of December, according to a Western diplomat in Colombo

 

 

 

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