Qualla: 1998 Temple of the Tooth Attack https://qualla.com/1998-temple-of-the-tooth-attack en-us © 2026 Bendyline Mon, 20 Jul 2026 10:21:31 GMT Qualla serial false Qualla support@bendyline.com yes https://qualla.com/_res/siteimages/rsslogo.png Qualla: 1998 Temple of the Tooth Attack https://qualla.com/1998-temple-of-the-tooth-attack 1998 Temple of the Tooth Attack: Introduction https://qualla.com/1998-temple-of-the-tooth-attack/ At 6:10 in the morning on 25 January 1998, three LTTE Black Tigers drove an explosives-laden truck along Raja Veediya, the King's Street in Kandy, firing at soldiers manning roadblocks. They crashed through the entrance of the Temple of the Tooth and detonated their payload. Two explosions tore through the pre-dawn quiet. Seventeen people died, including the three attackers and a two-year-old child. More than twenty-five others were injured, among them four women, a Buddhist monk, and a police officer. The blast damaged buildings within a five-kilometer radius and shattered the temple's roof, facade, and an ancient moonstone that broke into forty-three pieces. It was the most devastating attack on the holiest site in Sri Lankan Buddhism, a deliberate act of symbolic violence during a civil war that had already consumed tens of thousands of lives.

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]]> Wed, 11 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/t/c/3/3/1998-temple-of-the-tooth-attack-wp/tc33-1998-temple-of-the-tooth-attack-intro.mp3 0:06 1 full 1998 Temple of the Tooth Attack: A War at Its Peak https://qualla.com/1998-temple-of-the-tooth-attack/ Sri Lanka in the late 1990s was a country deep in civil war. The Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam had been fighting since 1983 for an independent Tamil state in the island's north and east. In 1995, the Sri Lankan military recaptured the Jaffna Peninsula after years of LTTE occup...

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]]> Wed, 11 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/t/c/3/3/1998-temple-of-the-tooth-attack-wp/tc33-1998-temple-of-the-tooth-attack-a-war-at-its-peak.mp3 0:06 2 full 1998 Temple of the Tooth Attack: The Morning After https://qualla.com/1998-temple-of-the-tooth-attack/ The immediate aftermath was volatile. Police fired tear gas to disperse crowds gathering near the devastated temple. A mob of roughly a thousand people attacked and looted the Sri Selva Vinayagar Hindu temple at Katukelle in Kandy, damaging statues of twenty-two deities. But the ...

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]]> Wed, 11 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/t/c/3/3/1998-temple-of-the-tooth-attack-wp/tc33-1998-temple-of-the-tooth-attack-the-morning-after.mp3 0:06 3 full 1998 Temple of the Tooth Attack: The World Responds https://qualla.com/1998-temple-of-the-tooth-attack/ The attack drew swift international condemnation. UNESCO Director General Federico Mayor Zaragoza called it an "act of blind violence perpetrated against a place of meditation, joy and peace." UN Secretary General Kofi Annan expressed outrage, condemning the use of terror tactics...

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]]> Wed, 11 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/t/c/3/3/1998-temple-of-the-tooth-attack-wp/tc33-1998-temple-of-the-tooth-attack-the-world-responds.mp3 0:06 4 full 1998 Temple of the Tooth Attack: Restoration and Justice https://qualla.com/1998-temple-of-the-tooth-attack/ After debris was cleared, the temple reopened to the public on 10 February, barely two weeks after the bombing. Complete restoration took more than eighteen months. Craftsmen reassembled what they could of the shattered moonstone; the fragments that could not be restored are disp...

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]]> Wed, 11 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/t/c/3/3/1998-temple-of-the-tooth-attack-wp/tc33-1998-temple-of-the-tooth-attack-restoration-and-justice.mp3 0:06 5 full