Click the Pic J
Posted on 09/23/2006 3:57:40 PM PDT by Valin
COLOMBO, Sri Lanka (AP) - Hundreds of Muslim families are fleeing their homes in eastern Sri Lanka amid fears of a Tamil Tiger rebel assault to reclaim territory taken by government forces in recent fighting, a local government leader said Saturday. The chairman of the government in the coastal town of Mutur, who goes by the single name Thoufeek, said 700 to 800 families - about 10 percent of the population - left on Friday and Saturday after the Tamil Tiger separatists warned that they were planning an offensive. Many of Mutur's residents, who are mostly Muslims, only returned to their homes two weeks ago from refugee camps. They had been driven from the town by weeks of heavy fighting and artillery assaults in August that killed dozens of civilians.
Clashes between government troops and rebels have killed at least 1,000 combatants and more than 100 civilians since July. Foreign mediators are struggling to keep alive a 2002 cease-fire that ended a nearly two-decade-long civil war.
The rebels had been fighting for a separate homeland in the north and east for Sri Lanka's Tamil population, the country's largest ethnic minority. The Tamils, who are mostly Hindu, claimed discrimination from the majority Sinhalese, who are Buddhist.
The Tigers also have a long history of hostility toward the Muslims, Sri Lanka's second largest minority group. In August 1990, rebels killed 130 Muslims at two mosques on the same day.
On Friday, hundreds of people boarded boats in Mutur, about 140 miles east of the capital, and sailed for the nearby Muslim-majority island of Kinniyai, Thoufeek said in a telephone interview. Government forces refused to let them pass by road, said Thoufeek, who also heads the regional Muslim Council.
Many had reluctantly returned home in time for the Islamic fasting month of Ramadan which begins Sunday in Sri Lanka. Some 8,000 Muslim families live in the area.
Witnesses said the roadblocks were removed Saturday after meetings between the government and local authorities. Government ministers also traveled to the area to try to convince people to stay, but Thoufeek said the residents were too afraid after Tamil rebels distributed a leaflet saying they could launch hostilities on Mutur "at any moment."
The contents of the leaflet could not immediately be verified, but Thoufeek said it apologized and told people to immediately leave for their own safety.
The federal government in Colombo was not immediately available to comment.
In violence elsewhere, a Tamil Tiger rebel was killed in a gunbattle on Jaffna peninsula in the volatile north, the military said in a statement Saturday. It also accused separatists of murdering a civilian woman Friday in the eastern town of Batticaloa.
The rebels were not immediately available to comment on the incidents.
Norwegian Ambassador Hans Brattskar on Friday met the Tamil Tigers' political leader, Suppiah Thamilselvan, in the northern rebel stronghold Kilinochchi. The two discussed a recent rash of abductions, the rebels said on their official Web site. No additional details were available.
Hundreds of civilians have been killed or have disappeared in shadowy circumstances since December, when the latest surge of fighting began in earnest.
They think the Tamil Tigers are a football team.
I r got muchly edumakashuns!
They're fanantical bloodthirsty terrorists.
The pope quotes a medieval emperor and triggers riots and murder. Meanwhile, ACTUAL MUSLIMS GET MASSACRED in their dozens and the Muslims around the world .... do nothing.
Speeaking of fact(oids), I believe that it is the Tamil Tigers that ushered suicide-bombing into the post-modern age.
Tamil Tigers suck, bigtime, too. I went to Sri Lanka and everyone I met - Buddhist, Christian, Muslim, couldn't stand them. These tiger dirtbags are pioneers in terror, pioneering the suicide bomb, the female suicide bomber all kinds of crap the Palis copied later. They are human garbage and these Muslims are innocent. But notice that when the Muslims are innocent and not hurling rocks or provoking attacks in the name of Islamofascism, none of the usual suspects of Muslimhood really care, do they?
Even a broken clock...
The Tamil tigers totally suck, they are foulness incarnate, atheist Marxist communist retrogrades, wearing che guevara berets and massacring peasants in their spare time. Every single thing they do is vile. See my post #26 or any of the other posts of knowledgeable people here, they all know the deal. The people we need to beat over the head of this are the world islamofascist movement that does not care in the slightest that these innocent Muslims are being killed if the ones doing the killing are Marxists. They only care if Americans or people aligned to the West, like India, are the ones who strike out at them. As for deaths, they don't care at all, and this massacre shows it. All that matters to them is who is doing the killing.
I guess the credit goes first to the Kamikazes....
This tactic (suicide bombing) became widely known during the Second World War in the Pacific as Allied ships were attacked by Japanese kamikaze pilots who caused maximum damage by flying their explosive-laden aircraft into military targets. Since the 1980s, the low cost and high lethality of the tactic have made it a favorite with guerrilla, insurgent, and especially terrorist groups, notably in the Middle East and Sri Lanka. The Tamil Tigers were, as of 2000, "unequivocally the most effective and brutal terrorist organization ever to utilize suicide terrorism";[
That's why I said post-modern. I think the TT were the first to do it since WWII.
I suppose those Divine Wind folks also flew against military targets.
The Tamil Tigers were, as of 2000, "unequivocally the most effective and brutal terrorist organization ever to utilize suicide terrorism"
Perhaps even they had more scruples than to target noncombatants.
The Tamil Tigers pioneered the individual suicide belt-bomber; that was their true innovation, and they've killed far more people with that tactic than any other group in the world.
Hezbollah was doing suicide truck bombings in Lebanon before the Tamil campaign begin, however.
Hezbollah was doing suicide truck bombings in Lebanon before the Tamil campaign begin, however.
Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE)
Aliases: Tamil Tigers
Base of Operation: Sri Lanka
http://www.tkb.org/Group.jsp?groupID=3623
Date Formed:
1976
Strength:
Approximately 8,000 members
Classification:
Nationalist/Separatist
________________________________________________
Hezbollah
http://www.tkb.org/Group.jsp?groupID=3101
Aliases: Islamic Jihad, Islamic Jihad for the Liberation of Palestine, Organization of the Oppressed on Earth, Party of God, Revolutionary Justice Organization, The Islamic Resistance
Base of Operation: Lebanon
First Mentioned:
1982
Strength:
Greater than 1,000 members
Classification:
Nationalist/Separatist, Religious
You may be right. Here's a little history of both...
An LTTE (Tamil Tiger) ambush of a military patrol that killed 13 in 1983 is seen as the first battle of the civil war in Sri Lanka, which has yet to be resolved. In 1999, it was estimated that this conflict had already claimed 60,000 lives.
and
The group (Hezbollah) began to execute a series of operations against Israeli and U.S. targets; the U.S. forces were in Lebanon as part of a UN Peace-keeping mission, and between 1983 and 1985, elements of Hezbollah attacked the U.S. Marine barracks in Beirut, car-bombed the U.S. Embassy and later attacked the embassy's annex.
Click the Pic J
WHAT THE....!!!???
You realize the Tigers are second only to Hezbolah and the Palestinians (and were long in the lead) as the world's most prolific SUICIDE BOMBERS?
So, what? It's O.K. to CHEERLEAD terrorism if it's being done by a Hindu? Sick ....!
See reply 38 Stultis sums it it pretty well.
Reality Check Chuck.
Well let’s see now, the Tigers are not on a jihad to convert the whole world to Hinduism are they? They just want to be free on their own land. Perhaps I support their goal. Those were the same ideas that started the revolution in America and gave Texas its freedom from Mexico. A lot of people died in those wars of revolution.
On the other hand the islam cult is dedicated to world domination using conversion by the sword. In my opinion it is good thing any time the expansion of islam is thwarted.
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