The Raid on Anuradhapura Air Force Base, code-named Operation Ellaalan, was a commando raid conducted on

SLAF Anuradhapura SLAF may refer to *The Sri Lanka Armed Forces, the combined military of the Democratic Socialist Republic of Sri Lanka **The Sri Lanka Air Force The Sri Lanka Air Force (SLAF; ; ) is the air force, air arm and the youngest of the Sri Lanka Armed ...

an Air Force Base in

Anuradhapura Anuradhapura (, ; , ) is a major city located in the north central plain of Sri Lanka. It is the capital city of North Central Province, Sri Lanka, North Central Province and the capital of Anuradhapura District. The city lies north of the cur ...

Sri Lanka Sri Lanka, officially the Democratic Socialist Republic of Sri Lanka, also known historically as Ceylon, is an island country in South Asia. It lies in the Indian Ocean, southwest of the Bay of Bengal, separated from the Indian subcontinent, ...

by the

Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam The Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE; , ; also known as the Tamil Tigers) was a Tamil militant organization, that was based in the northern and eastern Sri Lanka. The LTTE fought to create an independent Tamil state called Tamil Eela ...

. The attack happened on 22 October 2007. At 3:15 AM a group of 21 LTTE commandos, most of them Black Tigers, who are known to be suicide bombers, attacked the air base. Shortly after the attack started the Tigers were supported by two light aircraft from the Air Tigers which conducted a bombing run on the base and escaped undamaged. Ten military personnel, including 2 Air Force officers, were killed in the attack and 22 were wounded. It was confirmed that 20 of the 21 commandos were killed. An Air Force

Bell 212 The Bell 212 (also known as the ''Bell Two-Twelve'') is a two-blade, twin-engine, medium helicopter that first flew in 1968. Originally manufactured by Bell Helicopter in Fort Worth, Texas, United States, production was moved to Mirabel, Queb ...

helicopter gunship was destroyed by friendly fire. It had been sent to the base to provide help and crashed near the base during the clashes killing four crew members. Initially, it was reported that only three aircraft were destroyed and one crashed. However, the Prime Minister stated two days later that up to eight aircraft were destroyed in the attack and another ten were damaged, whereas the LTTE claimed to have destroyed 15 aircraft on the day of the attack. Because of this claim, the sincerity of the government came into question. Two MI 24s were also damaged in the LTTE air attack on the SLAF base in Anuradhapura. B. Raman, a retired Additional Secretary of India and former Director of Institute of Topical Studies of

Chennai Chennai, also known as Madras (List of renamed places in India#Tamil Nadu, its official name until 1996), is the capital city, capital and List of cities in Tamil Nadu by population, largest city of Tamil Nadu, the southernmost states and ...

, released a statement regarding the attack saying that it "had been preceded by painstaking intelligence collection, and planning."

References

External links

LTTE releases names of Black Tigers in airbase raid
{{DEFAULTSORT:Anuradhapura Air Force Base 2007 Aerial operations and battles involving Sri Lanka Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam attacks in Eelam War IV Attacks on airbases in Sri Lanka 2007 crimes in Sri Lanka Attacks on military installations in 2007 October 2007 in Sri Lanka Airport bombings in Asia 2007 airstrikes 2007 building bombings Building bombings in Sri Lanka

Raid RAID (; redundant array of inexpensive disks or redundant array of independent disks) is a data storage virtualization technology that combines multiple physical Computer data storage, data storage components into one or more logical units for th ...

Air-to-air combat operations and battles Military operations involving airports