Word: jaffna
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...Prabhakaran was the youngest of four children, born in a middle-class family in Valvettiturai, a fishing town on the northern coast of Sri Lanka's Jaffna peninsula. Very little is known about his early life. "My childhood was spent in the small circle of a lonely, quiet house," he said in a 1994 interview. He described a deep-seated anger against the military and remembered an eighth-grade teacher who exhorted students to take up arms against it. "It is he who impressed on me the need for armed struggle and persuaded me to put my trust...
...teenager, Prabhakaran either dropped out of school or was suspended. Either way, he went on to found a small rebel group called the Tamil New Tigers in 1972. Three years later, Prabhakaran assassinated the mayor of Jaffna, a northern Sri Lankan province, by walking up to him outside of a Hindu temple and shooting him at close-range. In 1976, the Tamil New Tigers were redubbed the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE), a name it holds to this day. (Watch TIME's video of civilians caught in the Sri Lankan civil...
...Prabhakaran, known among his acolytes simply as "the leader," has been sought by the Sri Lankan authorities ever since the 1976 murder of Alfred Duraiappah, then mayor of the northern city of Jaffna. But until now he has eluded capture in his jungle hideaways and, reportedly, on occasional clandestine trips to other parts of the region. "He is surrounded by the army," says Vinayagamoorthi Muralitharan, previously known as Colonel Karuna when he served as the LTTE's eastern military commander. "It is now almost impossible to escape undetected. All the top Tiger leaders are still very much in the Vanni...
...Wijesinha cites a government plan to make Jaffna a national center for information technology, as part of a larger development program for Tamil areas. "The city used to be known for its excellence in education," he says. But, to the tens of thousands who are fleeing their homes as artillery fire rains down across the northeast, this vision of prosperity and peace seems painfully far away...
...ruling coalition depends upon the support of Tamil parties within India, has urged Colombo to deliver on these promises. And there has been some progress: In Sri Lanka's east, competing Tamil parties, which include former LTTE cadres, successfully contested elections there, and the same scenario may emerge in Jaffna, the northern city which is the cultural center of Sri Lanka's Tamils...