Troops began shelling suspected Tiger positions around Maavilaru in the northeastern district of Trincomalee where the guerrillas blocked a sluice gate depriving water to some 15,000 farming families downstream.

Sporadic firing was heard in the main town of Trincomalee while security forces virtually cut off access to the nearby town of Muttur where much of the fighting took place last week.

Aid workers had been prevented from accessing Muttur for several days, but some who managed to get into the town early Sunday discovered the corpses of 15 local employees of French aid agency Action Against Hunger (ACF).

The bodies of 11 men and four women, all ethnic Tamils and wearing ACF T-shirts, were found face down in their office, Jeevan Thiagarajah, the head of the main umbrella group for aid agencies in the country, said.

"We don't know how they died or even when it happened," Thiagarajah, from the Consortium for Humanitarian Agencies, told AFP.

Tiger rebels had Saturday accused the government of killing 15 aid workers after denying a government claim they had massacared around 100 Muslims.

ACF is one of the hundreds of aid agencies that set up operations in Sri Lanka after an Indian Ocean tsunami wiped out much the island's coastal infrastructure and killed an estimated 31,000 people in December 2004.

There was no immediate word from the government about what happened to the aid workers in Muttur after fighting intensified there last Wednesday.

In the capital Colombo, government spokesman Keheliya Rambukwella said they were not involved in Norway's talks with the Tamil Tigers that led to the rebels announcing they would reopen the bitterly contested sluice gates.

"Water should not be a negotiating tool," Rambukwella told AFP. "We don't want terrorists to come and open the waterway. They must simply allow irrigation engineers to do it, otherwise we will open it anyway."

He said Norway's peace envoy Jon Hanssen-Bauer had not consulted Colombo in cutting a deal with the Tigers. "Hanssen-Bauer's discussions should have included us," said Rambukwella, who is also the Policy Planning minister.

The LTTE's political wing leader S. P. Thamilselvan told Hanssen-Bauer that they would lift the water blockade, but warned of a return to full-scale war if the military launches new air strikes or artillery attacks against them.

The guerrillas were travelling to open the Maavilaru sluice gates as promised when they came under attack, Tiger spokesman S. Puleedevan told AFP from the rebel-held town of Kilinochchi.

"We had informed the Sri Lankan government and clearance was obtained," Puleedevan said. "But, as they approached the area, there was heavy shelling and they can't open the sluice gates. Even the monitors had a narrow shave."

Puleedevan said despite the provocation they were willing to consider opening the gates, but were now awaiting a response from Norway which had established urgent talks with Colombo over the latest crisis.

Heavy fighting has raged in the area since the military first carried out air strikes on July 26 and followed it with a ground offensive five days later.

"If the government carries out any more air strikes or artillery attacks, we told Norway that we were afraid we will consider it as full-scale war in the future," another Tiger spokesman Velayudan Dayanidi warned.

Diplomats close to the peace process said Hanssen-Bauer's meeting with the Tigers on Sunday morning was seen as a key breakthrough to end the bloodshed, but hopes were dashed with the government's rejection of the deal.

It has been the worst fighting in Sri Lanka since a truce was agreed in 2002. An estimated 60,000 people have been killed since the Tamil insurgency began around three decades ago.

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