Sri Lankan military spokesman Prasad Samarasinghe said the fighting broke out after the LTTE members were trying to attack Naval and police targets at Pesalai in Mannar, about 230 km north of Colombo, at about 6:55 a.m. local time (0125 GMT).

"LTTE had launched 12 boats to carry out this attack and the Navy had been able to destroy eight boats while damaging another three which resulted in killing at least 30 LTTE sea tigers," said Samarasinghe.

Samarasinghe said that six Navy personnel were killed and another three injured during the confrontation while two Navy boats were damaged.

The Army artillery fire and MI-24 Gun ships of the Air Force assisted in countering the LTTE attack, the spokesman said, adding that the situation has been totally brought controlled by the security forces.

On the other hand, the pro-LTTE website TamilNet reported that "four fishermen were shot and killed at the shores of Pesalai on Saturday morning when the troopers attacked civilians after a sea fight with the Sea Tigers in the seas off Pesalai."

The website also said, "Sri Lanka Navy troopers lobbed a grenade Saturday morning into the Church of Our Lady of Victory in Pesalai, killing a lady and wounding 44."

However, Samarasinghe denied the TamilNet report, by saying that "the LTTE terrorists continued their practice of targeting innocent civilians when they fire and injured civilians who took shelter at the Pesalai Church."

Also on Saturday, two suspected Tamil Tigers were arrested in Colombo's northern suburb area of Negambo while they were trying to carry out a suicide attack mission on the beach, said the military.

The two LTTE members swallowed cyanide before being arrested and they had been admitted to the hospital, according to local police.

Saturday's fighting came two days after a bus was attacked in the country's northern district of Kebitigollewain that killed 64 civilians and injured 87.

The incident blamed on the LTTE was the worst since the government and the LTTE entered the February 2002 cease-fire agreement.

Sri Lanka's cease-fire broker Norway has warned that the spiral of worsening violence in the country is bringing the Indian Ocean island towards full civil war and requested an immediate halt of all violence.

Norway said that the continual attacks on civilians are exacerbating the already critical situation, and the attack at Kebitigollewa brings the violence in Sri Lanka to a new level.

The Nordic truce monitoring group, the Sri Lanka Monitoring Mission, also urged the two parties to "restrain themselves as they have an obligation towards the people to maintain peace and calmness among the population."

The LTTE said after the aborted Oslo talks that it had lost faith in the government for a negotiated settlement and would press for the right to self-determination for the minority Tamils.

Sri Lankan President Mahinda Rajapaksa, while strongly condemning the LTTE for "brutally killing unarmed innocent people," stressed that the government is still committed to negotiated settlement to the country's ethnic issue.

Violence blamed on both sides and last week's aborted talks in Oslo has raised fears of the country returning to the bloody armed conflict for the first time since 2001.

The escalating violence has killed more than 700 people since December last year.

However, some analysts point out that it's hard for the government to continue its restraint policy in the near future and the violence in the island country might escalate to a higher level.