Word: ltte
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...around Colombo on Monday as Sri Lankans celebrated what they hoped would be the end to a civil war that has plagued the nation since 1983. At 1:40 p.m., Sri Lanka's government radio announced that Velupillai Prabhakaran, the elusive leader of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE), was killed early this morning by special forces in the island's northern Karayamullavaikkal area. The 54-year-old Prabhakaran, who headed the Tamil separatist movement for 33 years, had been trying to flee the shrinking 100-m by 100-m pocket of land still under Tiger control...
...Prabhakaran's trusted lieutenants - intelligence head Pottu Amman and Sea Tiger leader Soosai - were also killed in the ambush. "LTTE terrorists made their final bid to evacuate its leaders early this morning as army élites pierced in to the last remaining LTTE foothold last night," the Defense Ministry said in a statement later in the day. "The terrorists managed to take hold of two vehicles and [are] believed to have put their senior leaders into those vehicles before they started moving northward." (See pictures of Sri Lanka's rebel-held territory...
...were cornered into the narrow patch on Sunday after President Mahinda Rajapaksa had announced the day before that the Tigers were a spent force. "We are not after any person or any personal agenda. We want to rid this country of terrorism; that is why we went after the LTTE leadership," Lakshman Hulugalle, director-general of the Defense Ministry's Media Centre for National Security told TIME. "With the leadership wiped out, this organization cannot re-emerge." Army Commander Lieutenant Sareth Fonseka also said that Prabhakaran's death marked the end of the LTTE-led separatist war. "We have...
...United Nations estimates that 50,000 people remain trapped in the six-square-kilometer area still controlled by the Tamil Tigers, which have been fighting for a separate ethnic Tamil homeland since 1983. The Sri Lankan government says there are no more than 15,000 to 20,000. The LTTE holds only this small strip of territory on Sri Lanka's northeastern coast within an area designated by the Army as a so-called safe zone. Over the weekend, the Army announced that it had re-demarcated the safe zone, chopping it down to just 2.5 km long. The Army...
...LTTE, meanwhile, continues to use the remaining civilians as human shields, according to the Army and human rights groups. Military sources say that the Tigers have moved the civilians away from the perimeter of the war zone, where they could escape as soon as the Army advanced, into the area's middle where the Mullivaikal hospital is located. On April 20, an estimated 100,000 civilians fled the zone within 72 hours when the Army breached a major Tiger fortification. Sri Lankan troops advanced a further 300 meters into Tiger territory on Tuesday. "We still believe that thousands of people...