Thousands of child soldiers have been forcibly recruited by Tamil Tiger rebels in Sri Lanka despite a cease fire called in 2002 between the government and the separatists, Human Rights Watch said in its recent report.

The New York-based organization accused the Tigers of continuing to enlist boys and girls at a rate of more than 100 a month in a clear violation of promises given when the peace accord was signed two years ago.

This had brought fear instead of the expected peace dividend, the report said. When families refused to allow their children to be recruited, the children were sometimes abducted from their homes at night or forcibly recruited while walking to school. Parents who resisted recruitment faced attacks or detention.

"The cease fire has brought an end to the fighting but not to the Tamil Tigers' use of children as soldiers," said Jo Becker, the children's rights advocacy director for Human Rights Watch.

The report cites figures from Unicef, which has documented 3,516 cases of underage recruitment since the signing of the cease fire agreement. Human Rights Watch estimates that the Tamil Tigers now have more than 5,000 child soldiers in their ranks, some as young as 10.

The UN estimates that 50,000 children in the war-affected regions of north-east Sri Lanka are not attending school, and 140,000 have been displaced from their homes. The Tigers deny that they recruit children for military purposes, saying that they are volunteers handling "non-combatant work".

International law prohibits the recruitment of children under the age of 18 by "non-state" armed groups, and enlisting children into conflict under the age of 15 is now considered a war crime.

But General Ashok Mehta, who led the ill-fated Indian peacekeeping force in Sri Lanka, said: "Child soldiers have two important advantages. One, you need bodies to fill the trenches, and two is that they have very high levels of motivation." -Dawn/The Guardian News Service.