COLOMBO (AP): Sri Lanka's government said on Thursday it will push ahead with its efforts to destroy the Tamil Tiger rebel group this year despite a devastating battle that left at least 76 soldiers dead or missing.

The military said it killed 100 guerrilla fighters and seized a small strip of territory in the battle on Wednesday along the front lines in the Jaffna peninsula. The rebels said they killed more than 100 troops and lost only 16 fighters.

``The liberation operation will continue,'' Cabinet Minister Keheliya Rambukwella said, reaffirming government plans to crush the rebels and ``end terrorism by the end of the year.''

The fallout from the battle continued Thursday, with air force jets carrying out an early morning bombing raid on a Black Tiger base, where rebel suicide attackers are trained, the military said. Troops also killed four rebels in the Welioya area, military spokesman Brig. Udaya Nanayakkara said.

The battle on Wednesday was a serious blow to the government's offensive against the Tamil Tigers and their de facto state in northern Sri Lanka.

The military said fighting broke out just before dawn when rebel forces overran government positions in the rugged Muhamalai region. Thousands of government troops from two divisions fought back and seized 500 meters (yards) of rebel territory, the military said.

Rebel spokesman Rasiah Ilanthirayan said the government attacked first and the rebels drove them off, killing more than 100 troops. Ilanthirayan said the rebels had the bodies of 30 soldiers and would turn them over to their families.

The military said Thursday that 43 soldiers were killed, 33 were missing and 120 were wounded.

The battle marked the heaviest toll taken on troops since October 2006, when 129 troops were killed trying to push forward into rebel-held territory at the same place.

Military casualties were airlifted to hospitals as far away as Colombo, though reporters and photographers were barred from seeing them.

Both sides routinely inflate casualty figures for the other side and underreport their own losses. Independent accounts of the fighting are unavailable because journalists are barred from the war zone.

Rambukwella said the military would evaluate the performance of its troops ``as a matter of course,'' and could assess punishments, but he insisted the battle was not a major defeat.

``Comparatively, if one is trying to term this a debacle or a disaster, I do not agree with that,'' he said, citing far deadlier battles, including a 1996 rebel attack on an army camp that killed more than 1,200 troops.

Former army commander Gen. Jerry de Silva said the military's forces might be overstretched in trying to wage war in the north while defending the south from suicide bombings blamed on the rebels, known formally as the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam.

``The manpower is inadequate for a large campaign,'' he said.

He warned that the military should not ``underestimate the tenacity and the fighting spirit of the LTTE, especially when cornered.''

Fighting between the two sides has escalated since the government pulled out of a long-ignored cease-fire with the rebels in January and forced out the Nordic truce monitors who were some of the only observers with access to the war zone.

Senior government officials have vowed to destroy the rebel group by the end of the year. But diplomats and other observers say the army is facing far more resistance than it expected, and government officials have begun appealing to Sri Lankans to have patience with the war effort.

The Tamil Tigers have fought since 1983 to create an independent homeland for ethnic Tamils, who have been marginalized for decades by successive governments controlled by the Sinhalese majority. More than 70,000 people have been killed in the violence.