Word: lanka
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...Lanka seemed gripped by madness last week as a series of violent attacks resulted in the slaughter of more than 200 people. The killings began when separatist guerrillas belonging to the country's predominantly Hindu Tamil minority hijacked a bus and headed for Anuradhapura, a city largely inhabited by Buddhist Sinhalese. As the guerrillas drove into the city's crowded main bus station, they opened fire with automatic weapons, killing about 100 men, women and children. Then they drove to the Sri Maha Bodhiya, a sacred Buddhist site, and fired indiscriminately into a crowd that included nuns and monks...
...sacred 2,200-year-old bo tree said to have grown from a sapling of the tree under which Buddha found enlightenment, the guerrillas seemed almost eager to provoke retaliation. It did not take long. In the bloodiest strike, assailants boarded a ferry off the northern coast of Sri Lanka, near Jaffna, and hacked 39 Tamils to death with axes, swords and knives. The Sri Lankan navy has denied accusations that it was involved in the slaughter; the same day, police surprised Tamil rebels hiding in a cave in the Eastern province and killed 20 guerrillas...
...danger has been building ever since Sri Lanka won independence from Britain 37 years ago. As the Tamils see it, discrimination by the Sinhalese majority has gradually eroded their political rights...
Since then, despite a government-imposed shoot-on-sight nightly curfew in the north, the Tigers have steadily increased the pressure, assaulting government strongholds, ambushing army convoys and derailing trains. By now the insurgents, grouped in six separate organizations, claim to have 1,000 guerrillas deployed in Sri Lanka and an additional 7,000 at the ready in India. They are assisted by 200 advisers from the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine...
...military's excesses have not only radicalized Tamils, they have also alarmed Sri Lanka's friends. The U.S., mindful of the island's strategic location, continues to back Jayawardene's pro-Western government but is not holding out the prospect of U.S. military aid. India, home to almost 50 million Tamils of its own, insists that it does not favor the creation of a separate Eelam but turns a blind eye to at least 20 training camps in India run by the Tigers...