COLOMBO, Sri Lanka — The Red Cross evacuated civilians from Sri Lanka’s Jaffna peninsula, where an estimated 500,000 residents face food and water shortages after more than two weeks of fighting between the government and Tamil Tiger rebels.

A boat brought 161 Sri Lankan and international aid workers from the region Sunday to the eastern port of Trincomalee, the government and the International Committee of the Red Cross said. A vessel carrying 1,500 metric tons of food and medicine is unloading at Point Pedro in Jaffna, the ICRC said on its Web site.

“The government of Sri Lanka has taken all measures to provide essential food items to the Jaffna civilians,”the government’s Medic Center for National Security said.It is helping civilians who want to leave “in fear of the risks created by the Tiger offensives.”

Sri Lanka has undergone its worst violence involving the military and the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam since a 2002 cease-fire. A dispute last month of over water supplies escalated into a battle for the northeastern town of Muttur, and fighting since August 11 cut off the Jaffna peninsula in the north.

The LTTE has “reduced its offensive to a series of intermittent attacks in the north and east,” the Defense Ministry said on its Web site today. At least two soldiers were killed and 41 wounded by rebel artillery and mortar fire today in the Trincomalee district, Agence France-Presse reported, citing unidentified military and hospital officials.

The government and the LTTE accused each other of starting the fighting in Jaffna. The Tamil Tigers said the army prevented residents of the village of Manatkadu from leaving as they set up a camp Sunday, TamilNet reported, citing local residents.

As many as 159 soldiers and 480 rebels have been killed since August 11, the Defense Ministry said last week.

The government last week lifted curfews in areas of the peninsula, which allowed residents to leave their homes and buy food and other essential items, the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees said August 25. Many displaced people are trapped on islands off the peninsula and need assistance, it said.

More than 204,000 people have been forced from their homes by violence in the South Asian island nation since April, the UNHCR said. A total of 6,672 people crossed the Palk Strait to reach India’s southern state of Tamil Nadu and an estimated 162,200 people are displaced inside Sri Lanka, it said earlier this month.

The country’s peace negotiations have collapsed under almost daily attacks since the two sides held their first talks in three years in February.They include the killing of the army deputy chief of staff in a suicide bomb attack in June and the bombing of a bus in the same month that killed 60 civilians.

President Mahinda Rajapaksa last week appealed to the rebels to return to peace talks. The military has a “long-term hidden agenda” for beginning its attacks, S.P. Thamilchelvan, head of the LTTE’s political wing, said in response to the president’s call, according to TamilNet. Monitors of the 2002 cease-fire, led by Norway, last week withdrew temporarily from areas in the north and east because fighting is hampering their work, Norway’s Foreign Ministry said in an e-mailed statement.

The Tamil Tigers have been fighting for two decades for a separate homeland in northern and eastern parts of the country, in a conflict that has killed more than 60,000 people.

Tamils make up about 8.5% of Sri Lanka’s 20-million people with Sinhalese comprising almost 74% of the population, according to American government data.