or Tamil Tigers
Guerrilla organization seeking to establish an independent Tamil state in northern and eastern Sri Lanka.
Formed in 1972, it is considered one of the world's most sophisticated and tightly organized insurgent groups. By 1985 it controlled the port of Jaffna and most of the Jaffna Peninsula in northern Sri Lanka. After losing control of Jaffna in 1987, it carried out several attacks, including the assassinations of the Sri Lankan president and the former Indian prime minister and a suicide bombing that killed 100 people in the capital of Colombo. Negotiations between the Tigers and the government broke down in the mid-1990s, and fighting subsequently intensified until February 2002 when a permanent cease-fire agreement was signed.