COLOMBO, Feb 10 (AFP) - Sri Lanka’s Tiger rebels have been reported to the UN Security Council for recruiting thousands of child soldiers and could face an international travel ban, a report received here showed Thursday.

Secretary General Kofi Annan in his latest report on "Children and Armed Conflict," a copy of which was seen by AFP here, said Sri Lanka’s Tamil Tigers had recruited more than 4,700 children, some as young as 11, since 2001.

"The LTTE (Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam) has often carried out recruitment by force, abducting children while on their way to school or during religious festivities, and beating families and teachers who resisted the seizure of the children," Annan said.

He said he was recommending to UN Security Council take "targeted and concrete measures where insufficient or no progress has been made" by parties named in his report, including the Tigers.

"Such measures should include the imposition of travel restrictions on leaders and their exclusion from any governance structures and amnesty provisions, the imposition of arms embargoes, a ban on military assistance, and restriction on the flow of financial resources to the parties concerned."

Annan’s report said that during 2004 alone, more than 1,000 cases of new recruitment and re-recruitment were reported to UNICEF, a high percentage of them girls.

Out of the 4,700 cases of child recruitment since April 2001, more than 2,900 children have returned or been released to their families, including about 1,230 children who were formally released, he said.

Over 1,660 children went home following fighting in eastern Sri Lanka in April 2004, and the fall of a breakaway faction of the LTTE. In addition, at least 550 children have deserted from the LTTE during this period.

The Security Council is expected to debate the report on February 23.

The latest UN report came a week after the Tigers announced freeing 23 child soldiers amid allegations that they had recruited at least 40 underage combatants since the island was battered by tsunamis in December.

The LTTE said the children were handed over to the North East Secretariat on Human Rights (NESOHR) to be reunited with their parents.

"In a process of identifying under aged kids among those volunteered for enlistment with the LTTE... 23 such children were handed over to the NESOHR chairperson Rev. Fr. M.X. Karunaratnam," the Tigers said in a statement.

The release came after the UNICEF accused Tigers of recruiting at least 40 child soldiers since tsunamis devastated Sri Lanka’s coastlines and killed nearly 31,000 people on December 26.

The LTTE had taken three children from a relief centre for survivors in the north-eastern region of Trincomalee and another from the neighbouring Batticaloa district, UNICEF said.

The other children had been recruited from areas of the northeast held by the guerrillas, UNICEF said.