COLOMBO, 22 September 2007 — Sri Lankan fighter jets bombed a Tamil Tiger military base in the rebel-held far north yesterday triggering multiple explosions, the air force said, while a suspected rebel roadside bomb killed one civilian in the east.

The airstrike near the town of Puthukkudiyiruppu in the northern district of Mullaittivu was targeted at top leaders of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam and was the second such raid in the area in as many days.

“We got to know through intelligence there was a high-ranking meeting of the LTTE, so we took out the target,” said Air Force spokesman Group Capt. Ajantha De Silva. “It was an LTTE military complex called Imbran Pandian regiment.”

He had no details of any casualties.

The LTTE who say they are fighting for an independent state for minority ethnic Tamils in the north and east, said in an e-mail the bombs had damaged homes but caused no casualties.

However they were not immediately available for comment on a roadside bomb attack in the eastern district of Batticaloa, which killed one civilian and wounded two others. The army said the rebels were responsible.

Following another raid in the area on Thursday, in which the military said it destroyed a rebel munitions store, the Tigers said the bombs had damaged houses and wounded six civilians.

There was no independent confirmation of what the jets hit on Thursday or yesterday, how many people were killed or what had happened and analysts say both sides exaggerate enemy losses in a parallel propaganda war.

The bombings come on the heels of a new offensive launched by the Sri Lankan military this month to drive the rebels from the northwestern district of Mannar, after pushing them out from jungle terrain they controlled in the east earlier this year.

An estimated 5,000 people have died since early last year alone in renewed fighting after a peace process collapsed. Nearly 70,000 people have been killed and hundreds of thousands displaced since the war erupted in 1983.

Beset by censure over a rash of civil war human rights abuses, Sri Lankan President Mahinda Rajapakse will set out his case at the UN General Assembly next week, but critics doubt it will wash.

Rights groups say hundreds of people have been killed or abducted since last year, when the war resumed after a near four-year lull. Some abuses have been blamed on state security forces.

The government says the reports are overblown and designed to tarnish its image, and has vilified United Nations envoys for voicing concerns and slammed foreign governments and rights groups for criticism.

“The government is denying what is happening on the ground,” Jehan Perera of nonpartisan advisory group the National Peace Council said yesterday. “All the government’s denials lead to is an erosion of credibility.”

Relatives of the murdered and disappeared — some of the abuses blamed on state security forces or paramilitaries seen allied to the government, others on the Tigers — want answers and accountability, and critics say they are getting neither.

Some government officials have said many who have disappeared have gone abroad on holiday or eloped with lovers.