COLOMBO, March 26 (Reuters) - Suspected Tamil Tiger rebels attacked Sri Lanka's international aiport north of the capital Colombo before dawn on Monday, the military said, and witnesses who live nearby told Reuters they could hear gunfire.

"There is an attack going on , but we don't have any details," said Flight Lieutenant Kanista Rajapakse of the Media Centre for National Security. "There is fighting going on."

The attack comes in the wake of a series of deadly land and sea battles and amid an escalating new chapter in the island's two-decade civil war, which has killed around 68,000 people since 1983.

"I can hear gunfire from near the airport," said R.M. Gunasekera, an accountant who lives near the town of Katunayake around 23 miles (37 km) north of Colombo, where the airport is situated.

The Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) last attacked the airport in 2001, the year before a ceasefire deal which has since collapsed on the ground, in which half of the Sri Lankan airlines fleet of airplanes was destroyed.

President Mahinda Rajapakse's government aims to defeat the Tigers militarily within 2-3 years, and is pushing on with military offensives in the east and north despite pleas from the international community to stop.

The rebels, who are battling for an independent state for minority Tamils in the island's north and east, have warned of a bloodbath and analysts say a new chapter in a two-decade war that has killed around 4,000 troops, civilians and Tigers in the past 15 months alone is spreading.

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