By Simon Gardner (additional reporting by Buddhika Weerasinghe in Trincomalee)

COLOMBO, July 29 (Reuters). Sri Lankan air force jets killed eight Tamil Tiger fighters and injured several more in a fourth day of aerial bombings on Saturday in a bid to wrest control of a reservoir in the restive east, the rebels said.

Kfir fighter planes raided the eastern districts of Batticaloa and Trincomalee in an operation to clear access to a sluice gate, which the government accuses the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) of blocking to choke water supplies to farmers on government land.

Military officials said the air force had destroyed a rebel base in Batticaloa and believed the death toll was far higher, but the Tigers said their fighters were killed on their forward defence line with government territory.

The rebels vowed to hit back.

"We can't continue to maintain our patience", said S. Elilan, head of the Tigers' political wing in Trincomalee. "We will definitely retaliate ... This is causing a war-like situation".

The island's chief Nordic truce monitor said the government's reaction was overkill - and that with neither the state nor the rebels willing to halt the violence, a 2002 ceasefire was dead in all but name.

"In reality they more or less have terminated the ceasefire agreement in their actions", retired Swedish Major General Ulf Henricsson, who heads the Sri Lanka Monitoring Mission (SLMM), told Reuters in an interview a day after the air force dropped a bomb 750 metres (yards) from where he was talking to Tigers during a visit to Trincomalee.

"It is definitely the wrong method. It is definitely overkill if you want the water", he added.

Hardline Buddhist monks in saffron robes who hate the Tigers and are allied to President Mahinda Rajapakse are trying to reach the sluice gate themselves. About 1,000 local farmers from government territory joined them in protest.

CIVILIANS CAUGHT IN MIDDLE

"This is our life. We have pawned all our valuable items including gold to get money for cultivation", said farmer I.T. Karunaratne. "If we don't get water within two days, everything will go waste".

"All this because of the war. There should be peace. If the government can't open the sluice, how can they fight a war?"

Many observers fear the fighting could spiral out of control, rupture the truce and restart a two-decade civil war that has already killed more than 65,000 people.

Analysts and diplomats worry an exodus of truce monitors from Finland and Denmark after the rebels issued an ultimatum in the face of a European Union terror ban could create a dangerous vacuum and make the situation even more volatile.

The Tigers demanded monitors from European Union states Sweden, Finland and Denmark quit the five-nation monitoring mission by Sept. 1 after the EU listed them as terrorists.

The Finns and Danes said on Friday they had been left with no choice but to remove 22 monitors between them in the absence of security guarantees. Sweden has not yet decided.

Their exit will badly hamper the mission at a time when it is monitoring the bloodiest period since the ceasefire was signed. More than 800 people, most of them civilians, have been killed this year.

"If Sweden follow, it's just one-third of monitors left. We can't keep up with all the complaints, it's impossible for us", Henricsson said.

"If SLMM is completely closed, you do have not that messenger that can support talks and look into serious violations. It will definitely make the life of ordinary people more unsecure".

Sri Lanka's strained peace process is deadlocked.

The Tigers have pulled out of peace talks indefinitely, Rajapakse has rejected their demand for a separate Tamil homeland outright, and analysts and diplomats widely fear it could take years to seal a final peace deal.

Reuters AlertNet

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