COLOMBO, July 23: More than 30 people have been killed in fighting in northern Sri Lanka, the military said on Wednesday, after the government dismissed a declaration by Tamil Tiger rebels of a brief unilateral ceasefire.

An e-mail statement from the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam early on Tuesday said the rebels would refrain from military action during the 15th South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (Saarc) conference from July 26 to Aug 6.

But Sri Lanka rejected the rebel gesture and Foreign Minister Rohitha Bogollagama said the government would not abide by it.

“Ground battles killed 29 LTTE terrorists and injured 58 on Tuesday,” said a spokesman at the Media centre for National Security on Wednesday, referring to fighting in the northern districts of Jaffna, Vavuniya and Welioya.

The military also said the fighting had killed three solders and injured 12.

The fighting comes a week after the military’s claim it had dealt a “fatal blow” to the Tamil Tiger rebels, with the capture of the northwestern town of Vidattaltivu, the main base of the Tigers’ sea wing and their logistics hub for the region.Sri Lanka’s government is pursuing a strategy to gradually retake the Tiger’s northern stronghold and win the 25-year civil war amidst an almost daily barrage of land, sea and air attacks in northern rebel-held territories.

Sri Lanka’s 2002 Norwegian-backed ceasefire pact with the Tamil Tigers formally ended in January after the government decided to scrap it, arguing that the rebels were using it to buy time to regroup and rearm.

The civil war has killed more than 70,000 people since it started. The Tigers have been fighting for an independent state in north and east Sri Lanka for minority Tamils since 1983.

The Tigers were not immediately available for comment.

The government and rebels trade death toll claims that are rarely possible to independently verify.

Nordic truce monitors, who blamed troops and rebels for repeated abuses, were banished by the government after President Mahinda Rajapaksa formally scrapped a 6-year truce in January.

Analysts say the military has the upper hand in the latest phase of the war given superior air power, strength of numbers and swathes of terrain captured in the island’s east. But they still see no clear winner on the horizon.

Sri Lanka hosts the 15th summit of the eight nation Saarc, which groups Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Bhutan, India, Maldives, Nepal, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, later this month.

—Reuters