Tamil Tiger rebels said the soldiers were killed over the past two days in clashes near the northern town of Kilinochchi.

A spokesman for the ICRC said they had also handed over to the Tigers a body of a rebel killed in the fighting.

The Sri Lankan army has mounted a big offensive aimed at capturing Kilinochchi, where the rebels have their administrative headquarters.

According to Sri Lanka Army official website, "authorities at Omanthai Entry/Exit point are now in the process of identifying twenty-five corpses, said to be those belonging to valiant troops after those remains were brought to the point by officials of the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) as the dusk fell on Thursday".

Still investigating

The Army say that they have so far identified only eighteen of them since some of them were badly mutilated or injured.

The website adds that, "However, the Army is to decide on the remaining seven soon after preliminary investigations are over".

Meanwhile, the pro Tamil Tiger website Tamilnet claims that the LTTE had killed one hundred and seventy soldiers and recovered thirty five bodies. Another three hundred were wounded in the fighting, it said.

However, the Director General of the Media Centre For National Security, Luxshman Hullugalle told the BBC that the government had stopped giving casualty figures to the media.

Independent observers and the media are barred from the war zone, making it impossible to verify battlefield reports released by either side.