Sri Lankan Troops Move Into Rebel Area

COLOMBO, March 25 - A new theater opened over the weekend in Sri Lanka’s escalating ethnic conflict, as government troops advanced into rebel-controlled territory in the island’s northwest over the last three days in a drive that they described as “neutralizing” guerrilla positions.

The latest clashes, in which the military and rebel Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam traded mortar and artillery fire, took place in the Mannar district, about 186 miles north of the capital. Rebels accused the troops of advancing Thursday into an area they controlled, taking with them some 120 villagers as a human shield, a claim the military denied. The military for its part said it retaliated after rebels fired at its positions.

The trading of blame is commonplace in this conflict. And casualties were, as usual, impossible to verify. According to an Agence France-Presse report today, the government claimed that it lost 10 soldiers and killed nearly 50 rebels. The Tamil Tigers claimed it killed 60 soldiers and lost 13 of its troops. Both sides routinely downplay their own casualties.

The Sri Lankan military has steadily gained ground on rebel positions in the east, driving an estimated 100,000 people from their homes in the last two months alone. The latest fighting signaled that the fighting had spread to a different part of the island. A 2002 cease-fire agreement, which demarcates forward defense lines of government and rebel forces, has been shattered.

The rebels today also accused the government of planting a roadside bomb that killed an aid worker with the Tamil Rehabilitation Organization, a charity sympathetic to the Tamil Tigers.

Civilians fled their homes, but the scope of displacement was contested: The government estimated their numbers at about 300, while the rebel group said the fighting prompted an exodus of 2,000 people.