AoD Blog 4 (Sri Lankan Civil War)

Subject: The Civil War in Sri Lanka
-----The LTTE has committed many various criminal and terrorist acts. The previous post did cover a few of these, although in the context of similarities to other terrorist/rebel groups. This post is about the two major types of LTTE attack, violent actions committed against the civilians, and assassinations on political and military targets.
-----The most detrimental attacks are done by the LTTE are usually civilian oriented attacks. These purely civilian attacks are claimed to be for collateral damage by the LTTE, although for the instances such as massacre, the collateral impact seems to be non-existent opposed to the massive body counts. These attacks are usually located near large groups of people or large areas of interest, such as banks. The most notable attacks are: the Gonagala massacre, the Anuradhapura massacre, the Palliyagodella massacre, and the bombing of Sri Lanka's Central Bank.
• The Gonagala massacre was an attack by 75 LTTE members on the small village of Gonagala where over 50 men, women, and children were hacked to pieces in the middle of the night, the reason for its notability is because the majority of the attackers were women, according to the survivors.
• The Anuradhapura massacre was an attack on 146 Sinhalese men, women, and children in a bus station in Anuradhapura by the LTTE, which was then followed by the LTTE gunners driving to a Buddhist Sri Maha Bobhi shrine and continuing the carnage. This massacre is notable because it is the largest massacre of Sinhalese by the LTTE to date.
• The Palliyagodella massacre was an attack on 109 Muslim men, women, and children by the LTTE in Palliyagodella, the notable factor being that this was the largest Muslim massacre by the LTTE to date and female cadres along with child soldiers were used in the attack.
• January 31, 1996, the LTTE crashed a lorry (large transport truck) containing 440 pounds of high explosives into the main gates of the Central Bank. The detonated bombs killed at least 91 people and injured 1,400 others. At least 100 lost their eyesight from the blast. A three-wheeler carrying two LTTE cadres with an automatic rifle and RPG were apprehended by Sri Lankan police. Another bombing on a train in July, caused Sri Lanka’s tourism to drop by 40%. This bombing was the deadliest LTTE bombing of the civil war until 2006.
-----Civilian attacks are common, even though not many of them grow to such levels, but an even more common method of LTTE attack is assassination. Examples of theses assassinations are: the former mayor of Jaffna, Alfred Duraiappah (said to be done as revenge for the killing of 9 Tamil civilians by Sri Lankan police), the former minister of foreign affairs and minister of defense, Ranjan Wijeratne, and one of the most notable, Rajiv Gandhi, the 7th Prime Minister of India, who was assassinated by a female LTTE suicide bomber while he was campaigning at Sriperumbudur, India for the Sriperumbudur Lok Sabha Congress candidate.