COLOMBO - Sri Lankan troops captured a strategic bridge from Tamil Tigers Saturday in a major land, sea and air offensive mounted less than a week into a unilateral truce called by the rebels, defense officials said, a dispatch of the AFP said.

Security forces backed by tanks, artillery, aircraft and gun boats mounted the drive at dawn to capture the Navatkuli Bridge in the northern Peninsula of Jaffna, Defense Ministry spokesman Sanath Karunaratne said.

"There has been little resistance in the first stages of the offensive which is now in full swing," Karunaratne said. "We have taken the Navatkuli Bridge."

He said the latest military operation, code-named Kinihira-Eight (Anvil-8), was the extension of another offensive carried out on December 22 in which troops wrested a 35-square kilometer area from the rebels.

Security forces took the bridge Saturday, the sixth day of a unilateral Christmas truce called by the separatist Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE).

The government has refused to reciprocate the rebel truce until they agree to enter Norwegian-backed peace talks.

There were no immediate reports of casualties. In the December 22 offensive, the military claimed to have killed over 150 Tiger guerillas for the loss of 25 government troops.

Ministry spokesman Karunaratne said the military objective was to dislodge the Tamil Tigers from the Jaffna Peninsula.

The LTTE was initially driven out of Jaffna in December 1995, but the rebels mounted their bloodiest ever offensive in April and May and retook a large area of the peninsula.

However, by May, the military claimed it had halted the LTTE's rolling offensive and had turned the tables on the Tigers.

The rebels had maintained a de facto separate state in Jaffna for nearly five years before they were ousted in December 1995. They have since vowed to retake the region.

The LTTE on Christmas Day called for international pressure on the Colombo government to reciprocate their unilateral truce and clear the way for Norwegian-backed peace talks.

It said the LTTE will go ahead with their month-long truce even though the government refused to match it.

The LTTE statement came hours after the Defense Ministry accused the guerillas of breaking their own truce within hours by attacking government troops in Jaffna on Christmas Day.

A member of the LTTE lobbed a grenade at army soldiers at Kaithady at dawn on Christmas Day, seriously wounding one trooper, Ministry spokesman Karunaratne said.

Within hours of the LTTE offering the cease-fire on Thursday, Sri Lanka's former colonial ruler, Britain, urged the Colombo government of President Chandrika Kumaratunga to reciprocate the rebel gesture.

But the government insisted that it had already made its willingness to hold peace talks clear and said it saw no need for further goodwill gestures, according to an AFP dispatch.