Black Tigers
special suicidal troops of the Tamil Tigers, a guerilla/rebel organization based in Sri Lanka
The Black Tigers (Tamil: கரும்புலிகள்) was an elite suicide commando (special operations capable) unit of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE), a militant Tamil separatist organization in Sri Lanka.
They were specially selected and trained LTTE cadres whose missions included direct action, irregular warfare, and mounting suicide attacks primarily against military targets. Their most notable military operations are the Raid on Katunayake Air Force Base, Raid on Anuradhapura Air Force Base, and Raid on the Iyakkachchi Army Base. Economic and political targets were also attacked at times, among them Sri Lankan President Ranasinghe Premadasa and former Indian Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi. Civilians were also killed during certain attacks, such as the bombing of the Central Bank and the Temple of the Tooth attack.
Since their formation in 1987 until the defeat of the Tamil Tigers in 2009, more than 330 Black Tigers carried out suicide attacks on air, land, and sea, mostly in Sri Lanka. Experts estimated that the Black Tigers had carried out the most suicide attacks reported around the world by the time the Sri Lankan civil war ended in 2009.
History
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. Immediately afterwards, regular LTTE cadres followed up, overwhelming the SLA soldiers in the targeted camp. 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.
“Black Tigers” enters the record as special suicidal troops of the Tamil Tigers, a guerilla/rebel organization based in Sri Lanka. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Black, Tigers and special can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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Chronology, provenance and viewpoint should be read together before a broad social or political interpretation is accepted. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jul 16, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q1779548. 1 of 1 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1987 and 2009.
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This entry incorporates text from “Black Tigers” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.