Word: lankans
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After a week of fighting, Sri Lankan troops had battled their way up Jaffna Peninsula, ousting ethnic Tamil separatists from a number of strongholds in the northern tip of the island nation. The cost was high: as many as 200 civilians believed dead and thousands more left without food. But, said a high-ranking official in Colombo, the capital, "we were winning...
Undeterred, Gandhi ordered five of the Indian air force's Soviet-built An- 32 transports, escorted by four French-built Mirage-2000 fighter jets, into Sri Lankan airspace to drop 25 tons of "humanitarian relief supplies" onto Jaffna. Colombo immediately charged that the airlift was a "naked violation of Sri Lanka's sovereignty and independence." India insisted that the move was needed to meet the "continuing deterioration" of Sri Lanka's Tamils, a condition Colombo denies...
...terrifyingly familiar episode in Sri Lanka's bloody four- year-old civil war -- except for its gruesome magnitude. Last week separatist Tamil rebels, who are fighting for an independent homeland in Northern and Eastern provinces, waylaid six vehicles with mostly Sinhalese holidaymakers returning home from celebrating the Sri Lankan New Year. The rebels dragged passengers, including women and children, from the buses and trucks, then mowed them down with machine-gun fire. When the shooting stopped, at least 126 travelers lay dead on the jungle roadside. The violence prompted the government to terminate a cease-fire with the rebels...
COLOMBO, Sri Lanka--A car bomb exploded yesterday at the crowded main bus terminal in the heart of the Sri Lankan capital, and officials said as many as 150 people were killed and more than 200 were injured...
...them Hindu, complain of persecution at the hands of the country's 12 million Sinhalese, who are predominantly Buddhist. The Tamils' main hope for the future now rests with Indian Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi, who helped arrange the latest cease-fire. Tamil leaders are pressing Gandhi to persuade Sri Lankan President Junius Jayewardene to grant them substantial autonomy, and thus put an end to the bloody conflict...