Sri Lanka prison blast wounds 7, fighting kills 34

Colombo: Sri Lankan air force jets bombed separatist Tamil Tiger positions on Friday after fighting killed 34 people and a grenade blast in a prison wounded seven people including suspected rebels.

The jets struck a "Sea Tigers" naval outpost in Pooneryn and a mortar position at Nachikudah, where the army's 58th Division is advancing, Air Force spokesman Wing Commander Janaka Nanayakkara said. He had no details on casualties.

The military said battles a various places along a jagged frontline in the north killed 33 rebels and one soldier on Thursday, during a thrust to capture the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam's (LTTE) symbolic capital of Kilinochchi.

Sixteen rebels and 26 soldiers were wounded in the same combat, the military said. The LTTE, silent about battlefield casualties for weeks, could not be reached for comment.

Verifying the figures is difficult because the military restricts access to the frontlines and both sides regularly twist the numbers in their favour.

The government has intensified advances in the insurgents' northern heartland in recent weeks, part of a push to end a 25-year old civil war since the official scrapping of an ill-observed ceasefire in January.

Early on Friday, police said a hand grenade blast at a prison in the eastern city of Batticaloa wounded seven prisoners, most of them suspected Tamil Tigers.

The rebels, who want to create a homeland for the minority ethnic Tamil people of the Indian Ocean island nation, in a statement on Friday accused the government of killing a farmer and a boy with a claymore mine in Vavuniya district.

The military denied attacking civilians. On Thursday, Defence Secretary Gotabhaya Rajapaksa urged thousands of people to leave the battle zones and promised safe passage.