At least 61 Tamil Tiger rebels and five government troops were killed in fresh fighting across Sri Lanka's embattled north, the defence ministry said on Friday. Heavy fighting along the de facto border with territory held by the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) saw fierce clashes on Wednesday and Thursday, leaving a total of 66 combatants killed, the ministry said. It said security forces had captured key locations from the Tigers in the coastal district of Mannar over the past two days. So far this year, the defense ministry has reported that security forces have killed at least 1,901 rebels for the loss of 112 government soldiers. The latest violence came as the island's government was accused this week of being behind hundreds of “disappearances.” The report from New York-based Human Rights Watch - entitled “Recurring Nightmare: State Responsibility for ‘Disappearances' and Abductions in Sri Lanka” - also added to calls for tough United Nations monitoring. Sri Lanka has in the past accused diplomats raising concerns over human rights of being “terrorists” and supporters of the Tigers, who are waging a decades-old battle for an independent homeland for the island's Tamils. Nordic truce monitors, who blamed troops and rebels for repeated abuses, were banished by the government after President Mahinda Rajapaksa formally scrapped a 6-year truce in January. Analysts say the military has the upper hand in the latest phase of the long-running war given superior air power, strength of numbers and swathes of terrain captured in the island's east. An estimated 70,000 people have died since the civil war began in 1983. __
