COLOMBO, 9 October 2007 — A police commando was blown up in a roadside claymore mine explosion in eastern Sri Lanka in an area declared liberated from the Tamil rebels as sporadic fighting claimed the lives of five others overnight, military officials said yesterday.

A team of police commandos carrying out a search operation in Bakmitiyawa, Ampara, 320 km east of the capital, hit the land mine yesterday morning, killing one policeman and injuring two commandos belonging to the special task force and a paramilitary guard accompanying them.

Government troops declared that the eastern province was fully liberated from the rebels after nearly a yearlong military operation. However, other sources have maintained that pockets of the rebels still exist in the area. On Sunday, a soldier was killed and another was injured when a suspected rebel flung a hand grenade at them in Murusavil, 380 km north of the capital.

Two rebels were killed in northeastern Welioya area Sunday and two others were killed in the northern Vavuniya district yesterday morning.

Sporadic fighting in the north and eastern parts of Sri Lanka has increased over the past two weeks leaving more than 125 dead, according to the military.

In another development, Sri Lanka’s military has forced three people making a documentary about the decades-long Tamil separatist conflict to leave the embattled northern Jaffna Peninsula, a media rights group said yesterday.

The team from Quick Silver Media was forced to leave last week despite having prior permission from defense authorities in the capital to film and conduct interviews in Jaffna, Free Media Movement said in a statement. The journalists, who were making the documentary for Britain’s Channel 4 television, had been in Jaffna for about one day before they were asked to leave for Colombo. They were also not allowed to work independently of the military, the group said.

“Jaffna has been under Sri Lanka government and military rule for nearly 12 years now,” the FMM said. “If it cannot allow independent reporting from Jaffna even after 12 years of its rule, that shows there is real problem that needs to be addressed.” It was not clear why the crew — two Britons and a local — were made to leave, but the private Daily Mirror newspaper quoted a military official as saying they were sent back for their own safety.

Sri Lankan authorities have severely curtailed journalists’ access to the troubled northern and eastern regions.