Sri Lanka's Civil Battle Escalates

COLOMBO, Sri Lanka — Tamil rebels and Sri Lankan troops fought one of their fiercest battles in years yesterday, battering each other with small arms and mortars in a confrontation that the military said killed 52 guerrillas and 38 soldiers. The rebels claimed they killed more than 100 soldiers and lost only 16 of their fighters in a 10-hour firefight they characterized as a rout of the heavily armed government forces. Either way, the battle was a serious blow to the government's promise to capture the Tamil Tigers's de facto state in the north, crush the rebel group, and end the 25-year-old civil war.