Fort railway station bombing | |
---|---|
Part of the Sri Lankan Civil War | |
Location | Fort railway station, Colombo, Sri Lanka |
Coordinates | 6°56′02″N79°51′00″E / 6.9338°N 79.8499°E |
Date | February 3, 2008 (UTC+5:30) |
Target | Train, station and general public |
Attack type | Suicide bombing [1] |
Deaths | 12 [2] |
Injured | 92 [2] |
Perpetrator | Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam |
The Fort railway station bombing was a suicide bombing of a commuter train while it was stopped at the Fort railway station, the main station in Colombo, Sri Lanka, on February 3, 2008. The bombing killed 12 civilians [2] and injured more than 100. [3] Killed in the attack were eight school children of D. S. Senanayake College's baseball team and their coach/teacher-in-charge.
The government said that the attack was carried out by a female suicide bomber, [4] belonging to LTTE, who got down from a train and exploded during rush hour on Platform 3. [5]
Secretary of Defence Gotabaya Rajapaksa directed the Criminal Investigation Department to investigate the bombing which led to the arrest of two suspects alongside explosives hidden in Colombo and the discovery of small business premises run by a LTTE cell. The cell leader had left the country after the bombing. [6]
The Sri Lankan civil war was a civil war fought in Sri Lanka from 1983 to 2009. Beginning on 23 July 1983, it was an intermittent insurgency against the government by the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam led by Velupillai Prabhakaran. The LTTE fought to create an independent Tamil state called Tamil Eelam in the north-east of the island, due to the continuous discrimination and violent persecution against Sri Lankan Tamils by the Sinhalese-dominated Sri Lanka government.
The Central Bank bombing was one of the deadliest attacks carried out by the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) during the separatist civil war in Sri Lanka between the government and the Tamil Tigers.
The Black Tigers was an elite suicide commando unit of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE), a militant Tamil separatist organization in Sri Lanka.
In January 2007, several bus bombs were set off in Sri Lanka
Jeyaraj Fernandopulle was a Sri Lankan politician who served as a cabinet Minister and a Member of Parliament in Sri Lanka. He was a Roman Catholic and hailed from a minority ethnic group Colombo Chetties.
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Eelam War II is the name given to the second phase of armed conflict between Sri Lankan military and the separatist Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam. The war started after the failure of peace talks between the Premadasa government and the LTTE. This phase of the war was initiated by the LTTE who massacred almost 600 Sinhalese and Muslim police personnel after they were ordered by the Premadasa government to surrender to the LTTE. The truce was broken on June 10, 1990, when the LTTE in October expelled all the 28,000 Muslims residing in Jaffna.
Major General Janaka Perera, RWP, RSP, VSV, USP, VSP was a Sri Lankan General and politician. He served as the Chief of Staff of the Sri Lanka Army and is considered one of the most distinguished generals in Sri Lankan history. After retiring from the army he served as a Sri Lankan High Commissioner to Australia and Ambassador to Indonesia. He was the opposition leader of the North Central Provincial Council until he and his wife were killed on 6 October 2008 by a suicide bomber. The LTTE have been blamed for the bombing by Sri Lankan president Mahinda Rajapaksa.
The 2008–2009 SLA Northern offensive was an armed conflict in the northern Province of Sri Lanka between the military of Sri Lanka and the separatist Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE). The battle began with a Sri Lanka Army (SLA) offensive attempting to break through the LTTE defence lines in the north of the island, aiming to conclude the country's 25-year-old civil war by military victory.
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The 2008 Dehiwala train bombing was a bombing of a commuter train, running from Colombo to Panadura on May 26, 2008, in Dehiwala, Sri Lanka, a suburb of Colombo. The bombing killed 9 people and injured at least 67. The Sri Lankan military blames the LTTE for the attack.
The Colombo central bus station bombing was the car bombing of the central bus terminal of Colombo carried out on April 21, 1987, in Pettah, Colombo, Sri Lanka. The 80-pound (36 kg) bomb killed at least 113 people and left a 10-foot (3 m) crater in the ground. The New York Times estimated 200 people had been injured.
Suicide Bombing was a popular tactic of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam of attacking enemies to maximize enemy casualties and minimize attacker's casualties.
Terrorism in Sri Lanka has been a highly destructive phenomenon during the 20th and 21st centuries, especially so during the periods of the Sri Lankan Civil War (1983–2009) and the first (1971) and second JVP insurrections (1987–1989). A common definition of terrorism is the systematic or threatened use of violence to intimidate a population or government for political, religious, or ideological goals. Sri Lanka is a country that has experienced some of the worst known acts of modern terrorism, such as suicide bombings, massacres of civilians and assassination of political and social leaders. Terrorism has posed a significant threat to the society, economy and development of the country. The Prevention of Terrorism Act of 1978 is the legislation that provides the powers to law enforcement officers to deal with issues related to terrorism in Sri Lanka. It was first enacted as a temporary law in 1979 under the presidency of J. R. Jayewardene, and later made permanent in 1982.
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