Sri Lanka: Tamils to honour nearly 20 000 fallen heroes

Saturday, 24 November 2007

Sri Lanka's minority Tamil community has begun commemorating nearly 20,000 of their men and women who were killed fighting for an independent homeland. Five days of traditional remembrance events began on Friday and are set to conclude on Tuesday evening when the Leader of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) lights the "flame of sacrifice". Documents released by the LTTE show that 19,887 fighters have been killed since 27 November1982.

The total includes 15, 691 males and 4, 196 females.

Amongst the dead were 343 members of the elite Black Tigers unit that launches devastating attacks deep within enemy territory.

The LTTE said 950 of their cadres have been killed this year as fighting with troops escalated while a Norwegian-brokered truce unraveled.

The truce went into effect beginning in February 2002 -- and still is in place, at least on paper -- but the fighting began to worsen in December 2005, soon after the election victory President Mahinda Rajapaksa who is viewed as by the Sinhala community as a reincarnation of ancient king Dutugemunu who defeated the Tamils at war.

There was no immediate reaction from the military to the Tiger losses.

Set as favorite

Bookmark

Comments (1) add comment

Subscribe to this comment's feed

tamilstofightback said:

The reaction will be delayed, to give them enough time to stack up the causality figures so it looks like the Tamils suffered 1000-1 losses. If we add up all their causality figures to date, the Tamil population will be extinct by now.

2007-11-25 01:53:16

Write comment

This content has been locked. You can no longer post any comment.

SiberNews