A Sri Lankan government minister said in Colombo Friday that the government was prepared for a truce with the Tamil Tigers to co-ordinate humanitarian relief for thousands of Muslims displaced by the fighting in the Muslim dominated town of Muttur since Wednesday.

"We are willing to go in for a cessation of hostilities immediately purely from a humanitarian point of view," Mahinda Samarasinghe, Minister of Disaster Management and Human Rights, said.

He said the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) were yet to respond to the unilateral offer by the government. The government response came as the leader of the main Muslim party Rauff Hakeem of the Sri Lanka Muslim Congress called for diplomatic pressure being put on both the government and the LTTE rebels to end fighting by agreeing to a temporary cessation of hostilities.

"It is a massive humanitarian crisis," Hakeem said, adding that over 20,000 people had begun fleeing Muttur into the town of Kantalai. "If fighting does not stop Muttur will end up as a ghost town," Hakeem said.

The International Committee of the Red Cross officials warned of severe food shortages, sanitary facilities in Muttur for a population under siege since the early hours of Wednesday when the LTTE rebels started attacking Muttur with mortars and artillery in an apparent retaliation for a government troop advance into their territory elsewhere in the eastern province.

The government claimed that the town of Muttur was under full control of the government troops denying rebel claims of control.

The national security media center here said that the Navy was able to thwart an attempt by the rebels to take control of the Muttur jetty by killing around 40 rebels while sailors suffering minimal damage.

The clashes in the eastern province are the worst since the two sides entered the Norwegian backed ceasefire in February 2002.

The international backers of the peace process have urged the two sides to cease hostilities and resume the process of negotiations. More than 64,000 people have been killed in the ethnic separatist armed conflict since the mid 1980s.

(Xinhua News Agency August 5, 2006)