May 18 in History
2009 – The LTTE are defeated by the Sri Lankan government, ending almost 26 years of fighting between the two sides
Fought from 1983 to 2009, the Sri Lankan Civil War began as an intermittent insurgency against the government by the Velupillai Prabhakaran led Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) that fought to create an independent Tamil state called Tamil Eelam in the north-east of the island. It evolved into a full-fledged civil war after the 1981 burning of the Jaffna Public Library and 1983 anti-Tamil pogroms carried out by the majority Sinhalese mobs often with State support. After a 26-year military campaign, and four failed tries at peace talks, including the deployment of the Indian Peace Keeping Force from 1987 to 1990, the Sri Lankan military defeated the Tamil Tigers on this day in 2009, bringing the civil war to an end with what the UN estimated to be a total of 80,000 to 100,000 deaths.
-Wikipedia