By Ranga Sirilal

COLOMBO, Dec 1 (Reuters) - Fifteen Tamil Tiger rebels and three soldiers were killed in clashes in Sri Lanka's north on Saturday, the military said, capping a deadly week that included two bomb attacks in the capital.

Dozens more combatants were wounded in the fighting in the northwestern district of Mannar and northern Jaffna peninsula, where renewed civil war is now focused amid near daily air raids, bombings and land and sea battles.

"Troops attacked a bunker line of the terrorists ... in Mannar," a military spokesman said, declining to give his name in line with policy. "Ground troops confirmed nine terrorists were killed and 47 wounded."

Six rebel fighters were killed in a separate clash in Muhamalai, which sits on a heavily-defended "border" which separates government from rebel-held territory in the far northern Jaffna peninsula.

The separatist Tigers, who are seeking to carve out an independent state in north and east Sri Lanka, were not immediately available for comment on the fighting. There were no independent accounts of how many people were killed or what had happened.

Analysts say both sides tend to overstate enemy losses and play down their own.

The military said a further 10 Tigers and one soldier were killed in clashes in Jaffna and the northern district of Vavuniya on Friday.

That fighting in turn came after a female suicide bomber blew herself up in Colombo killing a minister's aide on Wednesday and a parcel bomb killed 19 people in a shopping centre in a suburb hours later. The Tigers were blamed for both attacks.

The military has vowed to wipe out the Tigers militarily, and is seeking to drive the rebels out of Mannar after evicting them earlier this year from vast swathes of jungle terrain they controlled in the east.

More than 5,000 people have been killed in fighting between the military and the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) since early 2006, taking the death toll since the war erupted in 1983 to around 70,000.

Military analysts say there is no clear winner on the horizon, and fear the war could grind on for years. (Editing by Simon Gardner)

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