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Sri Lanka: Heavily armed Sri Lanka Army soldiers preparing to advance on LTTE positions, c. 2008. Photo by Sri Lanka Ministry of Defence (CC BY-SA 3.0 License)

The Sri Lankan Civil War was a conflict fought on the island of Sri Lanka. Beginning on 23 June, 1983, there was an on-and-off insurgency against the government by the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (the LTTE, also known as the Tamil Tigers and other few rebel groups), a separatist militant organization which fought to create an independent Tamil state named Tamil Eelam in the north and the east of the island. After a 26 year long military campaign, the Sri Lankan military defeated the Tamil Tigers in May 2009.