Word: tamils
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...country's top military commander in May 2009, Fonseka was the architect of the final campaign that encircled the last remaining Tamil Tiger positions from the north and east and led to the killing of the Tigers' notorious leader, Velupillai Prabakharan...
...colonel in the field, Fonseka led a 1993 operation dubbed Midnight Express to relieve government troops holed up in a fort in the Tamil Tiger hotbed of Jaffna, rescuing several hundred soldiers and winning commendations for his bravery. Accompanying him on the mission was Gotabaya Rajapaksa, brother of the President, and currently Sri Lanka's iron-fisted - and allegedly corrupt - Secretary for Defense...
...Fonseka, by then a Lieutenant General, was nearly killed by a Tamil Tiger suicide bomber (the group pioneered the deadly tactic following the start of its war for an independent Tamil homeland in 1983). After receiving treatment abroad, Fonseka returned to his desk within three months of the attack...
...Fonseka threw his hat into the ring for the Jan. 27 presidential elections, then considered just a formality for Rajapaksa, and provided the incumbent a real political challenge. Though he cobbled together a loose coalition of opposition, Muslim and ethnic Tamil political parties, Fonseka ultimately failed to win enough votes. The country's Tamil and Muslim minorities were largely disenchanted with both candidates, who hail from the country's ethnic Sinhalese majority...
...Quotes By: "We can announce very responsibly that we have liberated the whole country from terrorism." - To Sri Lankan state television after security forces defeated the last remaining Tamil Tigers, effectively ending one of the world's longest-running civil wars (CBC News...