Army spokesman Brigadier Sunil Tennekoon sought to play down the loss of Killinochchi as a ``tactical withdrawal'' after Sunday's attack by the LTTE which the Tigers claim was led by Velupillai Prabhakaran.

``We have pulled back from Killinochchi tactically and occupied fresh defence lines,'' Tennekoon said, denying reports that the LTTE had made off with armoured vehicles and heavy weapons from the abandoned camp.

The spokesman said the Tigers had also lost heavily in the fighting and quoting the LTTE's ``own sources'', said 500 of their cadres, including 156women, had perished in the fighting.

In all, in three days of fighting in northern Sri Lanka, over 1,000 combatants were killed and perhapsthree times more wounded, an astounding number even by the cynical standards of a country long used to war.

Deputy Defence Minister Anuruddha Ratwatte flew to the war-zone after briefing Cabinet colleagues about the latest developments on Wednesday. President Chandrika Kumaratunga is travelling abroad as are four other senior Ministers.

Trucks of the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) returned today to the conflict zone to collect more dead bodies after handing over 600 to the Army on Wednesday afternoon. Yesterday's handing over was done not in Vavuniya as is the usual practice but in Poovarasankulam, a secluded spot on its outskirts, away from curious eyes in the bustling town.

The Army's spin doctors are desperately downplaying the debacle at Killinochchi and attempting to project instead the renewed forward thrust of Operation Jaya Sekuru.

As soldiers and LTTE cadres died in the bloody battle at Killinochchi, 30 km south, Government forces engaged in the 16-month-old offensive tocapture the Vavuniya-Jaffna highway finally advanced into Mankulam, a junction they were trying to seize from the Tigers since January.

Tennekoon said 92 soldiers and ``over 100'' LTTE cadres died in the fighting at Mankulam. In the face of a serious military debacle, the Army is trying to gain maximum mileage from the capture of Mankulam as ``a big loss'' for the LTTE. On the other hand, the capture of Killinochchi had ``not affected'' the military's operations at all, the spokesman maintained.

However, military analysts said the capture of Mankulam may have been rendered easy with the LTTE pulling out most of its cadres guarding the junction for the Killinochchi operation, leaving only a small number behind to offer token resistance to Jaya Sekuru.