Īfter, following the death of LTTE leader Velupillai Prabhakaran, the Black Tigers ceased to exist, along with other LTTE fighting formations.īlack Tigers were drawn from the ranks of the LTTE's elite fighting formations. Consequently, it is not the act itself-killing by suicide-that was the Black Tigers' original or even main aim, but rather the military impact and its strategic consequences. As a result, they decided to resort to asymmetric warfare, creating a special wing to make up for their inadequate weaponry.
To mount such an attack, costly weapons such as artillery pieces, missiles, and fighter-bombers would have been needed – weapons that the LTTE could not afford to purchase. This was a hugely effective retaliatory attack using explosives from the Indian Research and Analysis Wing after the Sri Lankan Army's Operation Liberation had been halted under pressure from the Government of India and the subsequent signing of the Indo-Sri Lanka Accord ĭuring the earlier phase of the Tamil Tigers' military campaign, it did not possess the heavy conventional weapons required to attack large camps. Immediately afterwards, regular LTTE cadres followed up, overwhelming the stunned SLA soldiers.
The first Black Tiger was Vallipuram Vasanthan, who drove a small truck laden with explosives into a Sri Lanka Army (SLA) camp in Nelliady, Jaffna peninsula, on 5 July 1987 during the Battle of Nelliady, killing himself and between 39 and 100 Sri Lankan soldiers.