Sri Lanka's Tamil Tigers bomb military in north

By Ranga Sirilal

COLOMBO (Reuters) - Tamil Tiger light aircraft bombed a Sri Lankan military position in the north of the island on Sunday in the rebels' first air raid in nearly six months, the military said.

It also said that in ground fighting, 48 people died, most of them rebels.

The Tigers, fighting for an independent state in the north and east, were not immediately available for comment.

The Sri Lankan military and the Tamil Tigers are locked in a new chapter of a bloody civil war that has killed thousands in recent months.

"At about 1:35 a.m. (1905 GMT Saturday) they came and dropped three bombs on the Welioya Forward Defence line. Nobody was hurt and no damage to any property," a military spokesman said of the rebel air raid on the northern district of Polonnaruwa.

The rebels' last air strike was in October on an air force base in Anuradhapura.

Fighting between government forces and the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) has intensified since the government formally pulled out of a six-year-old ceasefire pact in January, though a renewed civil war has been in progress since 2006.

The military said fresh confrontations with the rebels had killed 28 Tamil Tiger rebels, and seven soldiers had died and one was missing in fighting in Welioya on Saturday.