It was not possible to get independent confirmation of what happened behind rebel lines.
Several hundred civilians arrived in the government held town of Kantale southwest of the strategic harbour of Trincomalee in the far northeast on Saturday, and nearly 2000 more joined them on Sunday, officials said.
Ranith de Silva, a Trincomalee government agent and the district's most senior civil servant, said: "They [the Tigers] attacked civilian villages, so these people came to Kantale and we are looking after them."
"They are in Buddhist temples and schools," he added. "We are feeding them. We are up to 2800 people now."
Kantale's Base Hospital admitted 41 people on Saturday, most of them soldiers, with artillery and mortar bomb shrapnel wounds. Children were among the injured.
Twelve-year-old R.D. Shantha, who was having his leg treated for a shrapnel wound, said: "I was playing with friends under a cashew tree when the shell fell nearby. I was the only one injured. My friends are okay."
Thousands displaced
Further southeast in the rebel-held town of Vakarai, where an estimated 30,000 displaced are living in camps and foreign aid workers have no access, the Tigers' humanitarian wing the Tamils Rehabilitation Organisation [TRO] said 17 people had been killed in camps they run.
Arjunan Ethirveerasingam, TRO project manager, said: "Six of our IDP camps have been shelled over the past 24 hours. No fire emanated from these camps.
"We want the government to allow the Iinternational Red Cross and the Sri Lanka Monitoring Mission [the Nordic truce monitors] to maintain an overnight presence in the area so they can witness for themselves," he added.
Anti-terrorism
The latest fighting comes after Mahinda Rajapakse, the country's president, this week introduced new anti-terrorism laws in a crackdown on the Tigers and their supporters after a failed suicide attack on his brother Gotabhaya, who is his defence secretary.
The rebels say the measures will only deepen a new chapter in the island's two-decade-old civil war.
Rebel leader Velupillai Prabhakaran last week declared the Tigers were resuming their independence struggle.
Analysts say that this means the island's conflict, in which more than 67,000 people have been killed since 1983, will likely escalate.
More than 3000 civilians, troops and rebel fighters have been killed so far this year alone amid a rash of air strikes, suicide attacks and major artillery battles
