Battle
The city of Jaffna had been for years a major stronghold of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE). The Tigers viewed the city as the capital of their new independent state. The city was briefly recaptured by the Indian army in 1987 but was later captured again by the Tigers. The new president of Sri Lanka, Kumaratunga, initially wanted to resolve all difference with the Tamils by peaceful means but the army pressured her to order an offensive against the LTTE. On October 17, 1995, 10,000 SLA soldiers attacked the city and in a 50-day siege that lasted until December 5, 1995, up to 500 soldiers and 2,000 rebels were killed. In the end the army managed to take the city and the peninsula from the Tigers, thus cripling the LTTE, however most of the LTTE forces managed to retreat into the jungle.
Read more about this topic: Battle Of Jaffna (1995)
Famous quotes containing the word battle:
“Above the bayonets, mixed and crossed,
Men saw a gray, gigantic ghost
Receding through the battle cloud,
And heard across the tempest loud
The death cry of a nation lost!”
—Will Henry Thompson (1848–1918)
“Up from the South at break of day,
Bringing to Winchester fresh dismay,
The affrighted air with a shudder bore,
Like a herald in haste, to the chieftain’s door,
The terrible grumble, and rumble, and roar,
Telling the battle was on once more,
And Sheridan twenty miles away.”
—Thomas Buchanan Read (1822–1872)
“Napoleon said of Massena, that he was not himself until the battle began to go against him; then, when the dead began to fall in ranks around him, awoke his powers of combination, and he put on terror and victory as a robe.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)