Colombo: Sri Lanka's military said on Thursday that 43 troops were killed, another 25 to 30 were missing and 224 were wounded in a fierce battle with LTTE fighters in the island's far north a day earlier.
Artillery duels continued to rage and residents in the army-held northern Jaffna peninsula, cut off from the rest of the island by LTTE lines, heard fighter jets fly towards Tiger territory. Explosions were heard in the distance.
The Red Cross said it was trying to arrange the handover of the bodies of 20 troops.
The bloody corpses were shown in graphic detail on pro-rebel Web site www.tamilnet.com.
LTTE said 10 of their fighters were killed but the military estimates they killed more than 150 rebels.
The Tigers say they have recovered the corpses of 75 troops from inside their territory after what they say was a military offensive.
The security forces deny crossing into rebel territory, but have blocked truce monitors from inspecting the area.
"The battle happened in no-man's land, between our forward defence lines and theirs," said military spokesman Prasad Samarasinghe.
The Tigers and the military each accuse the other of provoking the fighting, which political analysts and the international community fear could derail peace talks due in Geneva on October 28-29.
The fighting, some of the worst since a tattered 2002 truce, came after the Tigers warned any further incursions by the military could prompt a full-blown return to a war that has killed more than 65,000 people since 1983, including hundreds since the ceasefire.
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