COLOMBO, June 17 (Xinhua) --Six Navy sailors and more than 25Tamil Tiger rebels were killed in a fighting between the Sri Lanka Navy and the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) in the northern Mannar district Saturday morning, said the military.The fighting began at about 6:45 a.m. (0115 GMT) after the LTTE members were trying to attack Naval targets at Pesalai in Mannar,said military spokesman Prasad Samarasinghe.

    Samarasinghe said LTTE terrorists disguised as civilian fishermen attacked the naval dinghy patrol and the Navy repulsed the attack.

    "Despite being outnumbered the naval dinghies have valiantly engaged with 11 LTTE crafts and successfully chased away the terrorists destroying at least eight LTTE craft," said Samarasinghe.

    The spokesman said "25 to 30 LTTE cadres were killed, and six Navy sailors were also died in the fighting."

    However, Samarasinghe said the Air Force didn't make airstrikes on Saturday.

    Meanwhile, the pro-LTTE website TamilNet reported that "four fishermen were shot and killed at the shores of Pesalai" Saturday morning "when the troopers attacked civilians after a sea fight with the Sea Tigers in the seas off Pesalai."The website also said "Sri Lanka Navy troopers lobbed a grenade Saturday morning into the Church of Our Lady of Victory in Pesalai,killing a lady and wounding 44."

    The fighting came two days after a bus was attacked in the country's northern district of Kebitigollewa in that killed 64 civilians and injured 87.

    The incident blamed on the LTTE was the worst since the government and the LTTE entered the February 2002 ceasefire agreement.

    Sri Lanka's Air Force bombed selected LTTE targets on Thursday and Friday in retaliation for the bus attack.

    Sri Lanka's ceasefire broker Norway has warned that the spiralof worsening violence is bringing the Indian Ocean island towards full civil war and requested an immediate halt of all violence.The Nordic truce monitoring group, the Sri Lanka Monitoring Mission, also "urges the parties to restrain themselves as they have an obligation towards the people to maintain peace and calmness among the population."

    Violence blamed on both sides and last week's aborted talks in Oslo has raised fears of the island returning to the bloody armed conflict for the first time since 2001.

    The escalating violence has killed more than 700 people since December last year. Enditem