COLOMBO, July 4 (Reuters) - Sri Lankan police have identified suspects in the abduction and murder of two minority Tamil Red Cross volunteers, but they have fled into terrain controlled by Tamil Tiger rebels, the government said on Wednesday.

The corpses of the two men were found a month ago dumped southeast of Colombo, two days after they were taken away by men who identified themselves as police at a train station near a high security zone in the capital.

The killings came amid a spree of abductions and murders blamed on both sides amid renewed civil war between the state and Tamil Tigers.

"The police have been able to identify the suspects who are involved in the killing of the Red Cross's two members," government minister and defence spokesman Keheliya Rambukwella told a news briefing.

"Unfortunately they have identified them but they are not in areas where the police could move in at present ... They have gone into either Vanni or Kilinochchi," he added, referring to a swathe of northern Sri Lanka controlled by the Tigers.

He did not accuse the Tigers of killing the men, nor did he identify the suspects.

The separatist Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam were not immediately available for comment.

The Red Cross said it was news to them.

"We should be at least informed," said Sri Lanka Red Cross Director General Neville Nanayakkara. "It was in our presence that His Excellency the President instructed the Inspector General of Police to do an investigation and find the culprits within two weeks."

Rights groups have reported hundreds of abductions and disappearances in recent months after the military and separatist Tigers resumed a two-decade civil war in which nearly 70,000 people have been killed since 1983.

Sri Lankan police have arrested 16 people, including four policemen and a member of the air force, in connection with a rash of abductions and extortion, the military said on Wednesday.

Nordic truce monitors suspect military elements were behind the execution-style murder of 17 local staff of aid agency Action Contre la Faim in the island's east last year, the worst attack against humanitarian workers since the 2003 bombing of the UN headquarters in Baghdad. (For more information about murders and abductions in Sri Lanka, visit Reuters AlertNet http://www.alertnet.org email: alertnet@reuters.com; +44 207 542 5791)

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