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Police raided Kalmunai province, where jihadists were suspected of organizing last week's Easter attacks. In the ensuing battle, kamikazes killed 15 people. A flag of the Islamic State and explosives were found there.
Kikikazes hiding in a hiding place by security forces in eastern Sri Lanka blew themselves up, killing 15 people, including six children, the police said on Saturday.
A civilian was also killed in a firefight during the night raid near the largely Muslim town of Kalmunai, and hundreds of families fled their homes.
Kalmunai is in the home province of the jihadist suspected of having staged Easter Sunday attacks that left 253 dead.
Three men set off explosives killing three women and six children in the house Friday night, police said.
Gunmen opened fire on soldiers attempting to storm the house under cover of darkness, an army spokesman Sumith Atapattu said.
The ensuing shooting lasted more than an hour, said a military official, adding that the bodies had been found as a result of a search.
An explosive and Islamic State flag found in Kalmunai
Charred bodies and at least one armed man holding an badault rifle were seen in video footage broadcast on state television.
Explosives, a generator, a drone and a large amount of batteries were seen inside the house.
Some 600 Muslims fled a nearby settlement built to house the survivors of the 2004 tsunami because of the fighting and fled to a school, residents said.
The civilian was hit by crossfire and died while a wounded woman and child were rushed to the hospital.
The operation came after an announcement that extremists linked to the suicide bombings of Easter were installed in Kalmunai, 370 km east of the capital.
Zahran Hashim, founder of the national Thowheeth group Jama & # 39; ath (NTJ) at the origin of the bombings and one of the suicide bombers from Colombo, comes from the same province.
The clashes took place a few hours after the security forces raided a nearby location. According to them, Hashim and other suicide bombers took an oath of allegiance to ISIS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi before bombing three churches and three hotels.
Police said they found an IS flag and uniforms similar to those worn by the eight fighters in a video used by the IS to claim responsibility for Sunday 's attacks.
"We found the backdrop used by the group to record their video," police said in an earlier statement.
The ISIS armed group released their video two days after the attacks.
The police showed the clothes, the flag, some 150 sticks of dynamite and about 100,000 ball bearings seized from their homes on national television.
Security forces armed with emergency powers have intensified search operations for Islamist extremists since the bombings.
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