Sri Lankan security forces killed at least 65 Tamil Tigers in a week of intense fighting that further reduced the territory under rebel control, the military said on Sunday.The Tigers have been driven back into just 73 square kilometres (28 square miles) of jungle, military spokesman Udaya Nanayakkara said, having controlled large swathes of the north and the east of the island less than two years ago.
Officials say the rebels are increasingly desperate and may launch more dramatic attacks after their air strike on the capital Colombo on Friday, when two light aircraft were used in suicide missions that killed two people.
But the government said that the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) no longer had any air power after the planes were shot down.
"The security forces have put in the last nails on the LTTE's rudimentary air capability," it said in a statement on Sunday.
The UN's top humanitarian relief official, John Holmes, appealed to the government and the rebels to spare non-combatants as the warring factions appeared set for a final showdown.
Holmes said civilians were dying every day inside the war zone, where government troops are fighting to crush the Tigers' decades-long armed campaign for an independent Tamil homeland in the majority Sinhalese nation.
"I urge both sides to do everything they can for a peaceful and orderly end to avoid a final bloody battle," he said on Saturday at the end of his three-day visit to Sri Lanka.
The Tigers dominated about 18,000 square kilometres of territory until the middle of 2007, when the government launched its military offensive.
Meanwhile, the defence ministry said Sunday that the number of people killed in a guerrilla attack on a Sinhalese village in the east of the island had risen to 21.
Tiger gunmen stormed the village of Kirimetiya late Saturday and opened fire on residents, the ministry said.
It was the worst attack against a village in the multi-ethnic region in recent years, officials said, adding that troop reinforcements had been rushed to the area.
The bodies of 14 people were brought to the main hospital in the district capital of Ampara, a hospital official told AFP.
No independent reports about the attack were available from the remote village, which is located in an area that the Tigers controlled until 2007.
The whereabouts of rebel leader Velupillai Prabhakaran are uncertain, though one Sri Lankan newspaper on Sunday reported he was still leading the remnants of his forces but had sent his wife and younger son abroad.
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