MULLAITIVU, Sri Lanka - This town is no stranger to carnage, always bouncing back from the damages suffered during its periodic turns on the front lines of Sri Lanka's two-decade civil war. A government assault drove out ethnic Tamil rebels in 1990. After six years of siege, the guerrillas took it back in a ferocious, one-day battle that wiped out the army garrison of 1,200 and killed 800 rebels. The Tamils rebuilt, and the rebels' secretive chief, Vellupillai Prabhakaran, even made the town his home. But Mullaitivu met its match in Asia's tsunami catastrophe. Sitting on Sri Lanka's northeast coast,...