Bangalore, India — Sri Lanka’s Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam attacked army and navy personnel at a coastal base near Mannar in the northeast, the military and rebels said.

A flotilla of boats manned by the rebels’ Sea Tiger unit raided a security post at Kondampiddy in the early hours of yesterday, the army said on its Web site. The rebels “fled toward the north with their casualties on board the sea craft” after coming under fire from the base, it said.

LTTE fighters killed three sailors in the attack, TamilNet cited the Tamil Tigers’s military spokesman, Irasiah Ilanthirayan, as saying yesterday. The force seized arms and ammunition from the security post, he said.

Sri Lanka’s army is carrying out almost daily attacks in the north in a bid to capture or destroy the last bases held by the LTTE. The group was driven from the east in July last year in the worst defeat it has suffered it its 25-year fight for a separate Tamil homeland in the South Asian island.

At least 39 rebels and eight soldiers were killed in fighting at the weekend in the north, a Defense Ministry spokesman said on Sunday.

President Mahinda Rajapaksa’s government says it wants to reach a political settlement on Tamil separatism while eradicating terrorism in the north. The LTTE is designated a terrorist organization by America, the European Union, and India.

The government is seeking $1.8 billion in aid to help rebuild the Eastern Province and bring investment and tourists to the region that has a 265-mile coastline.

It has set up a Task Force Committee for Northern Development to begin agricultural projects and restructure education, health, and transport as well as resettling internally displaced civilians in the northern region, the Sunday Observer newspaper reported on Sunday, citing Minister of Social Welfare Douglas Devananda.