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Colombo: Sri Lanka's government on Thursday asked parliament to raise its war budget by 6.4 per cent to $1.64 billion in 2009, as air force jets blasted Tamil Tiger camps in a push to end the 25-year-old separatist war.
The bombings, part of a near-daily campaign of hitting rebel targets from the air while ground troops battle through heavily mined jungle, came a day after fighting killed 48 rebels and eight troops, the military said.
With troops just 2 km from the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam's (LTTE) headquarters town of Kilinochchi, the military's three-month push has intensified, with the guerrillas putting up heavy resistance in the north of the Indian Ocean nation.
"There was heavy fighting in Mullaitivu area and Vannirakulam area in Kilinochchi on Wednesday," military spokesman Brigadier Udaya Nanayakkara said, referring to two LTTE-held zones.
The rebels were not immediately available for comment.
A suicide bomber attacked a convoy ferrying Sri Lanka's agricultural minister through a suburb of the capital yesterday, killing one person and injuring at least four, officials said.
"It was a suicide attack on Maithripala Sirisena's convoy," a bomb squad official at the scene told Reuters. "It hit the tail of the convoy."
The military spokesman's office said one person died in the blast and hospital officials said four were injured.
It was not immediately clear if Sirisena was hurt, but Pushpa Soysa, head nurse at Colombo National Hospital, said an aide had been admitted with slight blast injuries.
Nobody claimed immediate responsibility for Thursday's attack, but the Tamil Tiger have a history of carrying out suicide attacks.
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