SYDNEY, Australia — Sri Lanka’s government said the rebel Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam group is trying to “cripple” education for children by forcing them to join their fight for an independent state.

The LTTE wants to “create an uneducated generation of children among the Tamil people,” a Defense Ministry spokesman, Keheliya Rambukwella, said yesterday. The rebels abducted 21 students and two teachers earlier this week in the eastern district of Amparai before releasing the group.

Rebels said the abductions were a mistake and that the factions responsible will be disciplined, the TamilNet Web site cited unidentified LTTE officials as saying yesterday.

Sri Lanka’s peace negotiations collapsed as fighting escalated, and the government three weeks ago strengthened anti-terrorism laws to combat suicide bomb attacks that included a December 1 attempt to kill President Rajapaksa’s brother and the death of the deputy army chief of staff in June.

The LTTE abducted as many as 455 children this year, the government’s Media Center for National Security said yesterday, according to a statement on its Web site. As many as 2,061 children may have been forcibly recruited since the government and LTTE signed a ceasefire in 2002, it said.

The United Nations estimated in 2004 that the Tamil Tigers had about 1,300 child soldiers in their ranks. The group in March denied it was recruiting children. The LTTE has outlawed recruitment of children under 17 and participation in combat of those under 18 years old, TamilNet reported yesterday.

This week’s abductions prevented about 114 schoolchildren from taking exams in the Amparai region, Mr. Rambukwella said. The LTTE has tried to exonerate itself on every occasion it engaged in militant activities, and the government will adopt “stern measures” if similar incidents occur in the future, he said.

Children “are at risk from all sides” in the conflict, U.N. Special Adviser on Sri Lanka Allan Rock reported last month after a 10-day mission to the country.

Sri Lankan troops are helping a breakaway rebel faction, known as the Karuna group, recruit child soldiers, he said. The U.N. Children’s Fund documented 164 cases of child abduction by the group up to October 31, although the actual number could be three times higher, Mr. Rock said. The Sri Lankan military denied the allegation.

The LTTE, classified as a terrorist organization byAmerica and the European Union, is fighting for a separate homeland in areas of the North and East of the country that it controls. The conflict has killed more than 60,000 people in the South Asian island nation with a population of 20 million. Peace talks between the government and LTTE in Geneva in October ended in failure.