In the last fourteen years, Sri Lanka’s bloody civil war has claimed  thousands of lives. In view of the Sri Lankan Government’s inclination to underplay the numbers killed, its reluctant admission to a figure of fifty thousand deaths underscores the point that this has indeed been a brutal war.

Most of those killed were civilians. In January this year, the Tamil Tiger rebels  said their losses up to the end of  November 1996 stood at 9,300. The London Observer Service, has  placed a similar number (9,800) on the Government side for roughly the same period. If one accepts the Sri Lankan Government’s version of 50,000  as accurate, it leaves the civilian toll at a staggering  30,000. 

According to the Sri Lankan State-Controlled "Daily News" of  4 March 1996, the Tamil Tigers were responsible for the deaths of  3571 (Sinhala) civilians meaning the 26,000 plus remaining civilians killed were Tamils.

It may be argued that the high toll of Tamil civilians is to be expected given that the theatre of  war after all, is the Tamil Homeland in the Northeast of the Island. While this argument may well explain the deaths of civilians "caught in the cross fire", this alone can hardly account for the  large scale  deaths of  Tamil civilians.

I believe that Tamil civilians have been  singled out as part of a strategy to "beat the Tamils into submission" and that it is this strategy that has resulted in the large number of Tamil civilian deaths.