COLOMBO, May 1: The Sri Lankan government on Tuesday denied Tiger guerrilla claims that an Air Force fighter jet was shot down and dismissed the LTTE’s new air wing as having only “trivial tactical value”.

A Sri Lanka Air Force (SLAF) jet fighter was shot on Monday when it approached the LTTE airfield in Ira’anaimadu around 2:30pm, LTTE military spokesman Irasiah Ilanthirayan was quoted in the pro rebel website Tamil Net, as saying.

“Our auto activated air-defence-system attacked the Sri Lanka Air Force MIG-27 bomber when it approached the Ira’anaimadu airfield on a bombing mission,” the rebel spokesman said while the government military insisted that no air force aircraft had been bombed by the rebels.

“It’s a complete fabrication”, military spokesman Brigadier Prasad Samarasinghe said.

The LTTE’s claim of destroying a fighter jet comes as they vowed to carry out more air raids in the south of the country, a day after wrecking havoc in Colombo in a surprise bombing of two oil refineries during early hours of Sunday.

The government however has vilified the LTTE’s flaunting of its newly acquired airpower, which first stirred panic on March 26, when it bombed the Air force base adjacent to the country’s only international airport in Katunayake, killing three persons and injuring 17.

“The LTTE is striving hard to rebuild its lost image through its ‘air raid novelty”, the Defence Ministry said in a statement.

“The LTTE, along with its pro-terror media network has been engaged in a major psychological operation to inflate the military power”, the Ministry further claimed as the government grappled with the newest threat by the rebels.

The attacks show the national air defence system must be improved “despite the insignificance of the terror airpower,” the Defence Ministry said as Foreign Minister Rohitha Bogollagama on Monday evening reassured Colombo based diplomats that the government was “fully capable of handling the challenge posed by the LTTE’s air capability”.