COLOMBO, Feb 15: Sri Lanka's government hoped Tamil Tiger rebels could be defeated in days, but both sides are now warning bloodier battles may lie ahead — and civilians are likely to pay a heavy price.

Security forces have cornered the retreating Tigers in the north of the island after over three bloody decades of fighting, the rebels' de facto state has been smashed and Sri Lanka's army says there are only 700 guerillas left.

Only last month it seemed the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE), or Tamil Tigers, and their often brutal campaign for an independent homeland were all but defeated.

But like on previous occasions when the guerillas appeared to be on their knees, the government says the Tigers are putting up strong resistance — including using civilians as “human shields”. They have launched ferocious counter-attacks since the beginning of this month in a bid to regain some of their lost territory and save their remaining heavy weaponry, defence secretary Gotabaya Rajapakse said.

“There were very heavy attacks from the first to the fourth of this month.

We suffered casualties,” Rajapakse told the Sinhalese-language Sunday

Lankadeepa weekly.

“But we repulsed the attacks successfully.” The ever-bullish Rajapakse, who is President Mahinda Rajapakse's younger brother, said the government believed that Tiger supremo Velupillai Prabhakaran, 54, had lost his ability to launch major attacks.

But he said Prabhakaran would use civilians trapped in the war zone as his “final trump.” In the latest incident targeting civilians, suspected Tiger rebels lobbed a grenade and opened fire at a bus transporting refugees out of the conflict area on Saturday, killing one woman and wounding 13, the defence ministry said.

Claims by either side cannot be verified as human rights groups, diplomats and independent journalists are not allowed to report freely from the conflict area.

But as security forces encircle the rebels in a 100-square-kilometre coastal jungle area — less than two per cent of land they controlled two years ago — concern has mounted for non-combatants.

The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) has said that “hundreds” of civilians had been killed and many more wounded since fighting intensified from January.

It has not said who was responsible for the civilian deaths.

“We are now entering the toughest phase of fighting because it is done in an area where there are lots of civilians,” said retired army brigadier general Vipul Boteju.

“The civilians are the last weapon in the Tiger armoury.” A serving general who declined to be named agreed the fighting would be harder from now on because of the heavy concentration of civilians trapped in the conflict area.

“The Tigers are slowing us down by holding civilians with them,” he said.—AFP