Violence out of control in Lanka: Monitors

Tokyo's special peace envoy Yasushi Akashi was to hold talks with President Mahinda Rajapakse and would also try to meet leaders of the Tamil Tigers during his four-day visit, the Japanese embassy said.

Despite a four-year-old ceasefire, more than 200 people have died over the last month in tit-for-tat attacks by government and rebel forces, who are fighting for a Tamil minority homeland.

"The escalation of violence that's occurring now is completely out of control," Helen Olafsdottir, spokeswoman for the Sri Lanka Monitoring Mission that oversees a four-year-old truce, told AFP.

"There's anarchy on the ground."

In the latest action on Friday, government forces attacked several rebel Tamil Tiger boats off the island's northwest, destroying one vessel and a truck transporting reinforcements, the military said.

One naval craft sustained damage from Tamil Tiger fire but there were no casualties among sailors, said defence ministry spokesman Prasad Samarasinghe.

The navy hit back and sunk a Tiger craft, he said.

Tigers had planned to fire on the navy with truck-mounted guns but a helicopter gunship was called in to destroy the guns, the navy said. There was no independent confirmation of whether the air strike was successful.

The fighting occurred after naval craft had confronted at least four boats of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) near Kuthirimalai Point off the coastal district of Mannar, the military said.

Also on Friday, three soldiers were wounded in a Claymore fragmentation mine attack near the main railway station at Vavuniya, 260km north of Colombo, Samarasinghe said.

A policeman died in a similar mine attack at Nelliyadi in Jaffna on Friday, police said.

Akashi's visit comes as the government was seeking international pressure to revive talks with the rebels on saving the ceasefire, which is tenuously holding despite the rising violence.