Sri Lanka's military spokesman said Wednesday that over 60 Tamil Tiger rebels and 10 troops have been killed in clashes in the island's restive Northern and Eastern provinces over the last few days.

Brigadier Prasad Samarasinghe said some 10 members of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) were killed in air raids on Monday night at Thoppigala jungles in the eastern Batticaloa district while 47 of them had been killed in two separate locations in Eastern Province over the weekend.

"We have handed over seven bodies to the LTTE and some of the other bodies were in decomposed state," Samarasinghe told reporters.

He said 10 Police Special Task Force (STF) and soldiers were killed while 32 others were injured in the clashes.

"The STF is having a limited operation in Thoppigala with the help of the Army," Samarasinghe said, adding that the rebels were carrying out sporadic mortar attacks against the troops.

He said at least four LTTE members were killed in Army's retaliatory fire in the northern Jaffna peninsula's Nagarkovil and Kilali areas over the weekend when the rebels stepped up its attacks on the military's forward defense lines.

Thoppigala remains the last LTTE bastion in the eastern Ampara and Batticaloa districts after the troops successfully cleared two key Tiger locations of Sampur and Vakarai in the port district of Trincomalee since last September.

Samarasinghe said some 87,000 civilians internally displaced due to clashes are waiting to be resettled in Eastern Province.

Over 4,000 people have been killed in the fresh outbreak of violence in the island's separatist armed conflict since December 2005.

Source: Xinhua