COLOMBO, Aug 12 (Reuters) - Sri Lanka's Tamil Tigers killed four soldiers with a roadside bomb attached to a bicycle in the island's far northern Jaffna peninsula on Sunday, the military said.

A 65-year-old man was killed in a separate rebel attack on a northern village, it said.

"They attached an improvised explosive device to a bicycle and the explosion killed one soldier. Three others who were seriously injured died in hospital," said a spokesman for the Media Centre for National Security, asking not to be named in line with policy.

"Thirteen others suffered minor shrapnel injuries."

In a separate incident, Tiger mortar fire hit a village in Weli Oya in the northcentral district of Anuradhapura, killing a 65-year-old man and wounding four other civilians, including a two-and-a-half-year-old child.

The Tigers, who say they are fighting for an independent state for minority ethnic Tamils in the north and east, were not immediately available for comment.

A spree of land and sea clashes, ambushes and air raids have killed an estimated 4,500 people since last year alone, taking the death toll of a conflict that erupted in 1983 to around 70,000.

Fighting between the state and rebels is now focused in the north after the military evicted the Tigers from their last stronghold in the east. However analysts see no clear winner on the horizon and fear the fighting could grind on for years.

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