Colombo, November 25:

Security forces ambushed and killed scores of Tamil Tigers in northern Sri Lanka today, the defence ministry said, adding its troops were poised to take the rebels’ political capital.

Government soldiers occupying a newly-captured bunker line from the Tiger rebels in the Jaffna peninsula carried out the ambush early today, the ministry said in a statement.

It did not say if there were casualties among troops.

However, the ministry said government soldiers in the northern mainland were set to take the town of Kilinochchi, the political capital of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam.

Heavy fighting was raging along three fronts on the outskirts of Kilinochchi despite monsoon rains, the ministry said.

“Soldiers are busy with strengthening the supply backbone for troops in the forward areas with loads of food, drinking water and medicine being transported there,” the ministry said.

“Troops await the next move. ‘Kilinochchi we are coming’ is their motto,” the statement added.

On Monday, the ministry said 27 soldiers had been killed and another 70 wounded in fighting around Kilinochchi. The Tigers said they killed 43 troops while the military claimed they had killed over 120 Tigers.

Sri Lanka’s government, which pulled out of a Norwegian-brokered truce in January, has vowed to take the Tiger’s political capital and dismantle the LTTE’s mini-state.

Authorities in Sri Lanka have restricted access to the embattled areas for journalists as well as most aid workers, meaning that claims by either side in the decades-old conflict are normally impossible to verify independently.