Founded in May 1976 by Velupillai Prabhakaran , it was involved in armed clashes against the Sri Lankan state forces and by the late 1980s was the dominant Tamil militant group in Sri Lanka . The escalation of intermittent conflict into a full-scale nationalist insurgency however did not commence before the countrywide pogroms against Tamils . Since 1983 , more than 80,000 have been killed in the civil war that lasted 26 years , a large number of whom were Sri Lankan Tamil civilians
countrywide pogroms
Black July
Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam