Sri Lanka strongly rejected allegations of war-crimes by its forces during fighting with the Tamil Tigers, saying its military "never returned" LTTE fire in the no-fire-zone 'fearing civilian causalities'.

"Within the no-fire zone we never returned fire because we would never have taken that degree of chance for inflicting harm on civilians," Foreign Minister Rohitha Bogollagama told ‘The Times’ which had reported that more than 20,000 civilians were believed to have died in the NFZ.

Bogollagma's remarks came as demands for an independent inquiry into alleged war crimes by Sri Lankan forces grows. He has angrily rejected war-crime allegations.

He blamed all civilian deaths on Tamil Tigers rebels, upholding accounts by refugees who said that they were fired on by the rebels while fleeing, but discounting the same witnesses when they talked of deaths from government shelling. He claimed that not one single civilian died as a result of army action.

According to the report last month the UN calculated that the civilian death toll was more than 7,000 by the end of April, a figure that was passed on to foreign missions, including Britain and the US.

UN sources in Colombo later told 'The Times' that the final toll was probably more than 20,000, the report said.