Colombo  – Government troops captured key rebel-held areas in northern Sri Lanka on Monday as security forces intensified ground and airstrikes after taking control of a strategic coastal town in the region, military officials said.

Troops controlled of a strategic junction on a main highway to the northern part of the country Monday and a coastal village in the north- eastern side of the country, the army said.

Ground troops and the air force have been carrying out offensives since Saturday after they took control of Pooneryn, 360 kilometres north of Colombo, which used by the rebels to smuggle military hardware across the South Indian coastal areas of Tamil Nadu.

The military has refrained from disclosing casualty figures of both sides, but claimed that rebels had suffered heavy casualties in the attacks.

The military has captured a major part of the Kilinochchi district, which is one of the last two districts which the rebels have been pushed into, but most civilians have now fled into the adjoining Mullaitivu district, which is dominated by the rebels.

The government had earlier said it was planning to crush the rebels before the end of the year, but though the military was unlikely to achieve the target before end of next month, the rebels have suffered heavy setbacks in the battlefront.

In an apparent attempt to put back pressure on the security forces, a medical doctor belonging to the majority Sinhala community was shot dead inside the hospital by suspected Tamil rebels in eastern Sri Lanka on Sunday night.

The killing prompted Health Minister Nimal Siripala de Silva to urge Defence Secretary Gotabhaya Rajapaksa to provide additional security to the medical staff, mainly for the Sinhala community members.

The army said that Tamil rebel infiltrators had shot the doctor in what they called as an "attempt to trigger communal backlashes and destabilize the resurrecting East." (dpa)