COLOMBO, Sri Lanka - Government forces fired barrages of artillery into the northern war zone Tuesday, killing at least 11 civilians, a day after it pledged to stop such attacks because of the risk to innocent lives, a rebel-linked Web site and a local doctor said.
Military spokesman Brig. Udaya Nanayakkara denied the accusation. While government troops were pushing forward with their fight to destroy the Tamil Tiger rebels, he said, they were using only small arms.
The dispute came as Sri Lanka fought off intense international pressure to accept a temporary truce to allow tens of thousands of trapped civilians to escape the fighting. The foreign ministers of Britain and France were headed here Wednesday to further press the government for a cease-fire.
The government, which accuses the Tamil Tigers of holding the civilians as human shields, said any pause in the battle would allow the rebels to regroup just as they face certain defeat in their quarter-century separatist war.
Instead, it promised Monday to stop using artillery attacks, airstrikes and other heavy weapons to ensure the safety of the trapped civilians.
However, the TamilNet Web site reported that Sri Lankan troops fired repeated volleys of artillery and mortar shells into the area in an attack that began late Monday and lasted through Tuesday morning.
About a dozen shells hit a makeshift hospital inside rebel territory, killing five patients and sending many others fleeing for their lives, said Dr. Thangamuttu Sathyamurthi, a government physician working in the war zone. Other civilians in the area were also killed, he said.
"I saw four dead bodies on the side of the road outside the hospital and two bodies in a trench," he told The Associated Press by telephone.
Journalists and aid groups are barred from the war zone, making reports of the fighting difficult to verify.
Meanwhile, the military announced the capture of a line of earthen fortifications the rebels had constructed to protect the tiny strip of land they still control along the northeast coast. Troops recovered the bodies of seven rebel fighters, Nanayakkara said.
Sri Lankan forces also foiled a rebel attempt to attack them with an explosives-laden truck, firing at the speeding vehicle and causing it to explode short of its target, the military said.
International concern has grown over the safety of the estimated 50,000 ethnic Tamil civilians still trapped in the war zone, in light of a recent U.N. report that nearly 6,500 noncombatants have already been killed in recent fighting.
British Foreign Secretary David Miliband and French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner were to arrive in Colombo on Wednesday to mediate the conflict and press the government for a cease-fire. The pair were among the highest level European officials to visit the island since the aftermath of the 2004 tsunami.
Sweden's Foreign Minister Carl Bildt had planned to come as well, but he said Tuesday he had been denied entry by the government. Bildt said no reason had been given for the decision.
Sri Lankan officials denied refusing Bildt permission to enter. A statement from the foreign ministry said he had never formally told the government he planned to join Miliband and Kouchner on that trip, adding he was welcome to visit early next month.
"This is remarkable," Bildt told The Associated Press by phone from Luxembourg. "You just don't act this way." He said he would not take up the invitation for a later visit.
The Foreign Ministry in Stockholm said it would recall Sweden's charge d'affaires from Colombo for consultations because of the snub.
The Tamil Tigers, listed as a terrorist group by many Western nations, have been fighting since 1983 for an ethnic Tamil state in the north and east after decades of marginalization by governments dominated by the Sinhalese majority.
