Wars
Sri Lankan Civil War
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The Sri Lankan Civil War was fought from 1983 to 2009 between the Sri Lankan government and the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam, an insurgent group seeking an independent Tamil state in the island's north and east, amid longstanding tension between the Sinhalese majority and the Tamil minority. The Tamil Tigers became known internationally for pioneering the large-scale, organized use of suicide bombing as a battlefield and assassination tactic, and the war passed through several rounds of failed negotiation and ceasefire over its quarter-century course. The conflict ended in May 2009 when government forces, in a final offensive that also caused significant civilian casualties drawing international scrutiny, cornered and killed Tamil Tiger leader Velupillai Prabhakaran, effectively destroying the organization and ending the insurgency.
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