June 28 (Bloomberg) — Sri Lankan forces captured a rebel town in the northeast of the island nation that served as a logistics center for the Sea Tigers, the naval wing of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam, the army said.

Troops seized Andankulam and the surrounding territory late yesterday in fighting that left about 11 rebels dead and three soldiers wounded, the army said in a statement on its Web site.

Andankulam fell about six hours after Sri Lankan forces took control of the central Chiraddikulam area and seized an LTTE base after fighting that killed at least 25 rebels, the army said. Troops are clearing the area of booby traps after seizing weapons. The LTTE hasn’t commented on the battles.

Sri Lanka’s military drove the rebels from Eastern Province in July 2007 after 14 years of fighting and is staging almost daily air and ground assaults on their bases in the Tamil- dominated north. Andankulam was used by the LTTE to distribute weapons to the Viddathalathivu Sea Tiger base, the army said.

The LTTE, designated a terrorist group by India, the U.S. and European Union, was the first group to use female suicide bombers and develop explosive belts and vests, the U.S. Office of the Coordinator for Counterterrorism said in a 2006 report. The group has about 7,000 fighters operating in the north.

President Mahinda Rajapaksa’s government stepped up assaults on the rebels after two rounds of peace talks failed in 2006. The government formally ended a 2002 cease-fire on Jan. 16.

Armed Struggle

Rajapaksa said earlier this week he would be prepared to negotiate with the rebels if they gave up their armed struggle.

``If the LTTE lays down arms at any moment, I am ready to work with them to achieve peace,'’ he told religious leaders in the capital, Colombo, according to a statement on the Defense Ministry’s Web site.

The LTTE said last September that any peace process must be based on a homeland for the Tamil people, in the same way the ethnic-Albanian majority in the former Serbian province of Kosovo gained independence. Tamils make up 11.9 percent of Sri Lanka’s 20 million people, according to the 2001 census. Ethnic Sinhalese accounted for almost 74 percent of the population.

LTTE leader Velupillai Prabhakaran said last November it was ``political naivety'’ to expect a peace deal with the government, which he accused of waging a genocidal war.

The Tamil Tigers regularly accuse Sri Lanka’s military of hitting civilian sites. The LTTE Peace Secretariat said in a statement this week that 11 preschools in the northern Manthai area were closed because of shelling, forcing 275 children to remain at home.

Prabhakaran was wounded in an air raid last November, according to the Sri Lankan military. The head of the group’s political wing was killed earlier that month.

The LTTE has been fighting for a separate homeland in Sri Lanka’s east and north for 25 years in a conflict that has killed more than 70,000 people.

Rajapaksa has said he won’t allow the nation to be divided.