COLOMBO, Sri Lanka - A wave of pitched battles, bombings and an airstrike killed at least 23 people across northern Sri Lanka, the military said Monday, as a Japanese envoy met with officials to try to stop the raging civil war.
In one attack, a roadside bomb hit a van in the Vavuniya region, just south of the front lines separating government forces from the Tamil Tiger rebels' de facto state in the north, military spokesman Brig. Udaya Nanayakkara said.
The passengers, civilian workers with a military escort, were returning from an army base after collecting explosives for use in civilian metal mining, he said.
The civilian driver and two soldiers were killed, while three other soldiers and a civilian were injured, the military said. The explosives inside the van did not detonate, Nanayakkara said.
The rebels have been fighting since 1983 for an independent state for Sri Lanka's ethnic Tamil minority after decades of marginalization by successive governments, dominated by the Sinhalese majority. The fighting has killed more than 70,000 people.
Violence has surged since Jan. 3, when the government announced its withdrawal from a 2002 cease-fire that had largely broken down amid two years of renewed fighting. At least 319 people have been killed -- 301 rebels, 13 troops and five civilians -- in that time, according to military figures.
In hopes of reviving the shattered peace process, Japanese mediator Yasushi Akashi met Monday with Foreign Minister Rohitha Bogollagama as part of a three-day visit to the Indian Ocean island nation. He was to meet with President Mahinda Rajapaksa later in the day.
Japan was a key backer of the Norway-brokered cease-fire, and Akashi played a pivotal role in organizing a 2003 donor conference in Tokyo to raise funds to rebuild areas in Sri Lanka destroyed by the war.
In other violence, government fighter jets attacked a Tamil Tiger intelligence and military base in Kombavikulam in rebel-held area, destroying it, Nanayakkara said.
Government soldiers also crossed the front lines Sunday night, destroying three bunkers and killing six rebels, the military said Monday. Troops killed a seventh insurgent when he went to inspect the front lines north of rebel-held territory, the military said.
Scattered battles throughout the north killed 10 other rebels and two soldiers, the military reported.
In another incident, troops demanded two rebels surrender, but one of them ran away and the other committed suicide, the military said. Rebel fighters carry a glass vial of cyanide around their necks so they can take their own lives if in danger of being captured.
Rebel spokesman Rasiah Ilanthirayan could not be reached for comment. Both the rebels and the government are accused of exaggerating their enemy's casualties, while undercounting their own.
