According to the government's defense spokesman Keheliya Rambukwella, 11 government troops were killed and about 20 ones were injured in the predawn attack launched by Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) rebels on the north central Anuradhapura Air Force Base.

The Air Force lost two MI24 helicopters, one K8 training craft and a Bell 212 helicopter gunship during the battle which lasted about three hours from 3:20 a.m. local time (2150 GMT).

The Bell 212 helicopter crashed with four airmen on board near the air base after it was called from the nearby Vavuniya district to assist the Armed Forces in the fighting.

Rambukwella said at least 20 LTTE rebels were killed by the Air Force and the Army in defending the air base, some 200 km north of the capital Colombo.

According to the peace secretariat of the LTTE, a special 21 LTTE Black Tigers (specially trained to carry out suicide attacks) attacked the air base and destroyed eight planes at about 3:30 a.m.

About an hour later, LTTE aircraft bombed the air base, causing further damage to the air base.

Commenting on the attack, Rambukwella said the LTTE was trying to ease the pressure on the organization in the north following a serious of "liberation operations" carried out by the troops in the rebel controlled Wanni area.

"It is very clear that they are now desperate because they have been losing heavily to the government," Rambukwella stressed.

The attack on the air base came about one week after several small-scale attacks on the Army in the south-eastern Yala area, with seven soldiers being killed and four injured.

Minister of Media and Information Anura Yapa said the attacks on the air base and Yala were face saving moves of the LTTE.

"The government would not be deterred or take its step back in its counter attack on terrorism," Yapa said, adding that "the government would clear the country of the LTTE menace."

However, he stressed that the government was still committed to a political settlement to the ethnic issue.

On the other hand, experts on counter terrorism have urged the government to capitalize on recent victories against the LTTE and try to hammer out a political solution to the long-running ethnic war with nearly 70,000 having been killed since the mid-1980s.

The government claimed in mid-July that the total Eastern Province had been free of LTTE rebels, and recently the Navy claimed it had sunk all of the Tigers' ships used for smuggling in war hardware.

"We need to invest military success into a viable peace deal," Shanaka Jayasekara of Australia's Macquarie University told delegates of an international conference on counter-terrorism in Colombo last week.

"There are no quick solutions to counter terrorism... the military can only create conditions wherein the adversary is inclined to or feel it necessary to come to the negotiating table," former Indian Army Chief V. P. Malik told the conference.

French anti-terrorism judge Jean-Louis Bruguiere said no military solution could solve the Tamil problem alone.

"Ultimately... the problem remains political," Bruguiere stressed.

The Sri Lankan government has said it will bring in its political package by the end of the year as means to end the island 's ethnic separatist conflict.

Palitha Kohona, the secretary to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs said that the government is mindful on the need to address the concerns of the island's minorities, particularly the Tamil community.

"The Sri Lankan government is of the view that this sort of problem (conflict with the Tiger rebels) cannot be resolved by military means alone," Kohona said.

Kohona defended the Sri Lankan government's military offensives against the LTTE, saying that military action is necessary to convince terrorist groups that their objectives cannot be met through violence.

An All Party Conference was convened by Sri Lankan President Mahinda Rajapakse in January 2006 to try and achieve consensus among south based political parties to solve the ethnic issue through a political package.

However, the process has been dragging on due to the difficulty of achieving consensus mainly on the subject of the unit of devolution.

Experts say the LTTE's recent attacks have shown the difficulty in achieving a quick military solution to the ethnic issue and it's time for two sides to choose between continuing the civil war and restarting the peace process brokered by Norway in 2002.

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