COLOMBO, Feb 20 (Reuters) - Sri Lankan troops launched a new offensive against a Tamil Tiger rebel-held area in the north on Wednesday, the defence ministry said, as a top United Nations official began a week-long tour of the island.

Fighting between the military and the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) has intensified since the government scrapped a six-year-old ceasefire pact last month. The government said the rebels had used the truce to re-arm.

"Troops continued to surge into LTTE territory towards Adampan junction in a fresh offensive launched at 6 a.m," the Ministry of Defence said in a statement on its Web site.

The ministry also said at least 30 rebels and three Sri Lankan soldiers had been killed on Tuesday in a series of engagements along the front line separating government and rebel forces in the north and northwest.

The Tigers were not available for comment and analysts say both sides tend to inflate enemy casualty figures in the absence of independent accounts of the fighting.

The latest fighting came as U.N. Assistant Secretary-General for Political Affairs Angela Kane arrived in the Indian Ocean island nation to kick off a week-long mission described by the world body as a regular follow-up visit.

Buoyed by battlefield victories in the east, where it has captured swathes of rebel-held terrain, the government is now seeking to overrun the separatist Tigers' northern stronghold in the latest chapter of a 25-year civil war.

But the Tigers continue to mount deadly suicide attacks and roadside bombings, which are increasingly scattered with some in the capital Colombo.

The International Committee of the Red Cross says it is deeply concerned about the growing number of civilian casualties in Sri Lanka, where the civil war has killed more than 70,000 people since 1983.

The ICRC said 180 civilians were reported killed and almost 270 wounded so far this year in bombings on buses, train stations and in the streets. The Sri Lanka government has blamed most of the attacks on the rebels. (Reporting by Ranga Sirilal; Editing by Alex Richardson

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