Mahawilachchiya massacre

The Mahawilachchiya massacre is an incident, where a group of four ethnic Sinhalese rice farmers, including a woman found dead with gunshot wounds on November 26, 2007 in Sri Lanka. Incident occurred at the village of Mahawilachchiya in the Anuradhapura District, 245 km from the island's capital Colombo and this was attributed to the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam also known as Tamil Tigers which is proscribed as a terrorist organisation by 32 countries (see list).

Victims

All the victims were working at their paddy fields when allegedly a group of LTTE cadres appeared and start shooting at them. In all 3 men and 1 woman were massacred and their gunshot-riddled bodies were later discovered by the security forces.

Aftermath

After the incident the government is to declare the area, as a ‘special security zone’ and will also set up a new army complex in Wilpattu, a defence official said. Defense sources further believes,this as an LTTE genocide attempt to cause fear among the villagers forcing them to flee their traditional lands[1]. LTTE had carried out many similar attack on Sinhalese and Muslims civilians in the past, as a result thousands of civilians lost their lives. Methods of killings were ranging from simply hacking, as in the case of Kent and Dollar Farm massacres and Gonagala massacre to shooting indiscriminately as in the Anuradhapura massacre.

References

• [2]
• [3]
• SATP
• NIDAHASA OnLine
• The Hindu
• Colombo Page
• Bloomberg
• bbc