COLOMBO (AP): Sri Lankan forces attacked Tamil separatists with artillery and mortars, triggering heavy battles that killed 10 guerrillas as the army closed in on a northern rebel stronghold, the military said Wednesday.

Tuesday's fighting near the Tamil Tigers' de facto capital in Kilinochchi district came as part of a major escalation in the country's quarter-century civil war. The military has vowed to destroy the rebel group by the end of the year.

The army identified rebel positions in the village of Chempankundu in Kilinochchi district and ``pounded (the positions) with continuous artillery and mortar attacks followed by a swift military incursion,'' the Defense Ministry said in a statement.

Troops later recovered the bodies of five rebels, the statement said.

Separate battles elsewhere in Kilinochchi left another five rebels dead, it said.

The statement did not provide details of military casualties.

Rebel spokesmen could not be reached for comment because most communication lines to guerrilla territory have been severed. Reporters are banned from the war zone, and media must depend on government and rebel statements for information about the war.

Both sides are frequently exaggerate the other's casualty numbers while underreporting their own losses.

The Tamil Tiger rebels have been fighting since 1983 to create an independent homeland for Sri Lanka's ethnic minority Tamils, who have suffered marginalization at the hands of successive governments controlled by majority ethnic Sinhalese.

More than 70,000 people have been killed in the violence.