COLOMBO - SRI LANKA'S military said on Sunday that government forces had attacked the Tamil separatists' last line of defence near the rebels' administrative capital and captured 19 rebel bunkers.

In fighting across the north on Saturday, soldiers pierced an earthen embankment which the military claimed was the rebels' 'last major defense' near Kilinochchi, the defence ministry said in a statement on Sunday.

Soldiers captured a part of embarkment and 19 rebel bunkers on Saturday, the ministry said.

It did not provide specific details on casualties but said the rebels 'suffered significant attrition in terms man and material' and that several soldiers died and many others were wounded in the fighting.

Rebel spokesmen could not be contacted for comment on the military reports because most communication lines to guerrilla-held regions have been severed.

Independent verification of the military's claims is nearly impossible because most journalists are banned from the war zone.

The fighting was reported after President Mahinda Rajapaksa told Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh in a telephone conversation that the military was trying to minimise civilian casualties in its campaign against the rebels, the foreign ministry said in a statement on Saturday.

There have been protests by ethnic Tamils in nearby India who say fellow Tamils are being targeted in the Sri Lankan conflict.

Mr Singh said last week that a military victory would not end Sri Lanka's long-simmering ethnic conflict, and encouraged its government and Tamil rebels to seek a negotiated settlement.

His comments came after the Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam, a regional political party from southern India's Tamil Nadu state, called for greater restraint by Sri Lanka's military in its offensive. Tamil Nadu is home to some 55 million Tamils who have ancestral links with Tamils in Sri Lanka.

Sri Lanka's decades-long civil war, largely concentrated in the ethnic Tamil-majority north and east, has killed more than 70,000 people. -- AP