LTTE’s shameless cowardice

Madirigiriya Village massacre – LTTE’s shameless cowardice

On 15 October 1992, LTTE carried out the most barbaric but cowardly act of genocide against Muslims and Sinhalese when they wiped out the inhabitants of Madirigiriya, Palliyagodalla and Ahamedpura villages in the Polonnaruwa district.

Over 400 LTTE terrorists armed with swords, machetes, clubs, and firearms stormed fast sleeping villages before dawn and carried out a house-to-house raid butchering poor farming families that had done harm to none. Police found severely mutilated bodies of 146 civilians. Over 83 others suffered serious cut wounds and gunshot injuries. Among the injured were 14 infants and over 20 children.

According to an eye witness accounts, the terrorists who were in army type uniforms came to the village from all sides and surrounded it . Thereafter they opened fire at about 3 AM. Many people rushed to the mosque for safety, but the terrorists followed them into the mosque and killed the villagers with hand grenades and rifles.

The newspapers said that The village presented a ghastly sight with dead bodies scattered all over and surviving men, women and children weeping porously over the demise of their dear and near ones. Bodies of mothers with their dead infants, pregnant mothers with their wombs ripped open, children with smashed skulls with clubs and axes were seen in dozens.

The terrorists involved in this attack were mainly comprised of LTTE teenagers.

Among the injured was one pregnant mother identified as Ayathma Umma 32. The terrorists had inflicted a serious injury to her womb and she was almost dead when she was taken to the operation theatre due to bleeding.

The baby could live only several seconds while the mother too died in the theatre at Polonnaruwa hospital. 20 children and 3 infants with severe cut injuries to their heads were transferred to the Colombo national hospital.

By the end of 1992, those NGOs and other supportive groups of the LTTE could no longer conceal the horrendous crimes committed by the LTTE in Sri Lanka. In May 1991, LTTE terrorists killed former Indian Prime Minister Rajiv Ghandi and one year after they killed Sri Lanka President Ranasinghe Premadasa.

The UN agencies and International Community that had so far kept blind eye to the humanitarian catastrophe in Sri Lanka started issuing statements of condemnation to the most barbaric acts of LTTE with their usual advice to the both parties.

However, most of these countries let the terrorists to raise funds on their soil to enhance their capacity to carryout more sophisticated crimes against Sri Lankan citizens.

Perhaps with the advice of their international partners on the damage that may cause to their image by continued village civilians massacres and also because of the success they had achieve in the ethnic cleansing campaign, LTTE refrained from carrying out major village massacres for the next two years.