4 more killed in Lanka violence

Some 100 people have died in just over two weeks after a series of suspected Tamil Tiger ambushes on the military were followed by attacks on Tamil civilians.

Both sides say they are still working towards talks that were scheduled for last week in Switzerland, but are now indefinitely postponed. But diplomats say the peace process seems deadlocked and some fear a return to the island's two-decade civil war.

In eastern Sri Lanka, troops shot dead two suspected rebels setting up a fragmentation mine ambush, the army said. One soldier was wounded.

An explosion in the northern town of Jaffna hurt no one, but two Home Guard troopers were later shot dead in Vavuniya, another own in Sri Lanka's north.

An army spokesman said troops had increased their presence around the village where six farmers were shot dead late on Sunday, in the northeastern district of Trincomalee.

The Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE), whose campaign for a Tamil homeland has killed more than 64,000 people on both sides, accuse the almost exclusively Sinhalese army of "ethnic cleansing" in the island's northeast, as well as increasingly frequent murders of Tamil civilians.