The Sri Lankan Navy said Friday that at least two Tamil Tiger boats were destroyed in an early morning confrontation in the eastern seas.

The Naval spokesman Commander D. K. P. Dassanayake said that two Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) boats attempted to attack a Dvora fast attack craft of the Navy by suddenly emerging from the fishing boats in the seas at Kuchchaveli near the eastern port of Trincomalee at 5:30 AM local time Friday (24:00 GMT).

Dassanayake denied initial claims of a Naval Dvora getting destroyed in the attack.

Early Friday attack was preceded by Thursday's confrontation in the northern Jaffna peninsula's Nagarkovil area.

Two Navy Dvora's were lost in the attack with several Naval personnel going missing.

The Navy said the LTTE had attempted to attack a civilian ferry transporting some 300 civilians from the eastern port of Trincomalee to the north.

The Navy fire had foiled the attempt, officials said. However, the rebels claimed that they had killed 25 sailors while losing five of their own men in the clash.

The clashes came after the breakdown of direct talks between the government and the LTTE in Geneva late last month.

The talks collapsed over the dispute involving the opening of the main A9 highway between the northern Jaffna peninsula and the south of the country.

Also on Friday, a minority Tamil legislator and his bodyguard were shot dead by unidentified gunmen in the Sri Lankan capital of Colombo, police and military sources said.

Nadarajah Raviraj, a member of parliament belonging to the Tamil National Alliance (TNA) was driving near his residence in Colombo when unidentified gunmen opened fire at his car around 8:30 AM local time (03:00 GMT).

Raviraj was sent to the National Hospital in Colombo with serious head injuries, hospital sources said, adding that both Raviraj and his bodyguard succumbed to their injuries at the hospital.

Raviraj was a lawyer and the mayor of Jaffna, the main Tamil city in the north of the country before entering parliament through the TNA which is seen as a proxy party of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam rebels.

The parliamentarian took part in a demonstration Thursday against the Sri Lanka Army shelling in the east district of Vaharai where scores of Tamil civilians were killed.

The pro-rebel website Tamil Net described the twice elected legislator as "an outspoken parliamentarian who voiced against the extra-judicial killings and forced disappearances in northeast and Colombo."

The police had commenced a search operation in the capital to apprehend the suspects.

The continued clashes have endangered the Norwegian backed process to bring peace to the island ending over two decades old ethnic armed separatist conflict.

The LTTE has been fighting an independent homeland in the north and east between the mid-1980s and 2002 when the Norwegians brokered a ceasefire.

(Xinhua News Agency November 10, 2006)