UPDATE 1-Sri Lankan rebels launch air raid, 10 sailors wounded

(Adds rebel statement, para 3)

By Ranga Sirilal

COLOMBO, Aug 27 (Reuters) - The first Tamil Tiger air raid on a Sri Lankan military target in four months wounded at least 10 navy sailors in the strategic eastern port of Trincomalee, the military said on Wednesday.

Separately, Sri Lankan air force fighters pounded Tamil Tiger positions on Wednesday near their symbolic capital of Kilinochchi, but no details of casualties were available.

"Ten sailors were wounded in last night's attack," military spokesman Brigadier Udaya Nanayakkara said, referring to the air raid. He said the plane, which appeared to have dropped two bombs, escaped barrages of anti-aircraft fire.

Also on Tuesday, ground fighting killed 27 rebels and two soldiers as the military kept up its push to surround the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam in their northern heartland, with the aim of defeating them by the end of 2008.

The LTTE said that the army's Deep Penetration Unit killed one refugee fleeing fighting and injured three more with a claymore mine in Puththuvedduvan. The military denied it attacked any civilians.

The government took full control of Trincomalee last year as part of a campaign to remove the Tigers from the island's east, in which it co-opted a splinter rebel group to help it fight. It houses a major naval base to combat the rebels' small navy.

The LTTE stunned the world in March 2007 when it used a single-engine airplane to bomb an air force base attached to Colombo's international airport, opening a new chapter in a 25-year civil war that has killed at least 70,000 people.