Word: tamil
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...massacre bore all the hallmarks of the guerrilla group known as the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam and came almost exactly one year after Indian troops launched their offensive to disarm the Tigers. Indian soldiers had arrived in Sri Lanka in July 1987 to help implement an Indo-Sri Lankan agreement that gives the minority Tamils a greater measure of autonomy. But militants on opposite sides of the bloody Sri Lankan conflict united in rejecting the agreement...
When India's Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi sent extra troops to Sri Lanka early this month to help end fighting by the island's Tamil separatists, the assumption was that the operation would be relatively quick and painless. After all, India's soldiers outnumbered the roughly 2,000 members of the ragtag Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam more than 3 to 1, and had the backing of Sri Lankan President Junius R. Jayewardene. But the offensive dragged on, offering little hope that the guerrillas will give up their four-year battle for an independent Tamil homeland...
...effort to control Jaffna, the Tamils' last major stronghold, India last week increased its Tiger-fighting force to an estimated 11,000. A scheme to isolate Tamil leaders by offering conditional amnesty to the rebels' rank and file fizzled, however, when no Tigers accepted the offer...
...Although the Sri Lankan army promptly returned to the barracks under the terms of the pact, the Tigers kept the bulk of their weapons and used them to deadly effect. Within six weeks of the pact's signing, Prabakaran's forces had murdered more than 150 members of rival Tamil groups. Last month, using his arms as a bargaining chip, Prabakaran won a major concession from the Sri Lankan government in Colombo: the Tigers were given control of a majority of seats on the interim council. But after promising "full" support of the agreement, Prabakaran suddenly insisted on naming...
...barred from the town, the exact number of noncombatant deaths was impossible to determine. Tiger spokesmen charged that the Indians had killed more than 250 civilians. ; Indian diplomats did not deny that civilian casualties had taken place, but blamed them mostly on the rebels' tactic of using the local Tamil population as human "shields." In the eastern province, meanwhile, Tiger commandos murdered a total of 21 Sinhalese civilians in two separate attacks and killed 20 Indian soldiers in a land-mine explosion...