Some facts from the IPKF's battle of Jaffna University
Many of you would have seen the Hollywood movie “Black Hawk Down”. The movie depicts the events of the Battle of Mogadishu in October 1993 when a unit of the US army sent to extricate the Somali rebel leadership, was ambushed, their helicopters shot down, and had to be evacuated by armoured carriers. It was the result of a major intelligence failure, where the Somali rebels had prior information of US operations that day. What you might know is how 6 years prior to that event, in October 1987 the Indian army found itself in exactly the same scenario during the Battle of Jaffna University in Sri Lanka - An airborne commando operation to extricate the LTTE leadership was ambushed, attacked and then had to be evacuated in a now legendary tank operation. My intention is not to detail out the events of October 11-12, 1987 when the Battle of Jaffna University occurred but to give some interesting facts from it. You can read about the complete battle on Wikipedia ( https://en.wikipedia.or