(Recasts with fresh Tiger, military comment) By Simon Gardner BATTICALOA, Sri Lanka, Dec 19 (Reuters) - Sri Lanka's Tamil Tigers said on Tuesday they had freed 23 teenage school children reported abducted overnight, and had suspended rebel fighters who recruited them without checking their age. However the military said the Tigers only released 15 of 16 girls aged 15-17 who were taken from an evening class in the coastal hamlet of Vinayagapuram, in the tsunami-battered eastern district of Ampara, late on Monday. One girl and seven boys were still missing. It was the first time the Tigers have made public a disciplinary measure against their own fighters, as the rebels fight a new escalating chapter of the island's two-decade civil war with the military. "It wasn't actually an abduction," Tiger military spokesman Rasaiah Ilanthiraiyan told Reuters by telephone from the rebels' northern stronghold. "Our cadres who brought in the young fellows did not properly check their ages, and that is criminal negligence." "They have been released to their relatives," he added. "The cadres involved have been decommissioned - like a suspension." The Tigers routinely deny charges by United Nations childrens' agency UNICEF that they recruit children, and argue that any children in their ranks lied about their age to get there. "When I joined, I didn't inform my parents. I went and joined with my fellow students," Ilanthiraiyan said. "That's how it's done." The military said the Tigers were lying. "The LTTE got caught red-handed," said military spokesman Brigadier Prasad Samarasinghe. "It was a clear-cut abduction." "These children were supposed to be sitting for a science exam today," he added. "They have only released the girls because their parents went to find them. They still have 7 boys." Sri Lanka has been plagued by abductions this year, which have been blamed both on the Tigers and on a group of renegades led by a breakaway Tiger commander called Karuna -- who Nordic truce monitors suspect some elements of the military are helping. Analysts say both rebel factions are abducting teenagers to boost their ranks as a new chapter in a two-decade civil war that has killed 67,000 people since 1983 deepens. The Tigers usually issue flat denials when accused of abductions or killings and have not previously hinted at any possible insubordination in their ranks. More than 3,000 civilians, troops and rebel fighters have been killed so far this year and tens of thousands of people have been displaced from their homes amid a rash of battles, air raids, ambushes and suicide bombings, leaving a 2002 truce in tatters. The Tigers, who accuse successive majority-Sinhalese governments of discriminating against minority Tamils, declared they are resuming their fight for an independent state in the island's north and east after President Mahinda Rajapakse flatly rejected their demands for a separate homeland. Analysts fear the island's civil war could rumble on for years.
