Attack On Colombo

By

Miha Alam

It was a usual evening but for the fact that I and my brother decided to sleep in our parents room as the air conditioner was not working. So there were we, the Alam family sleeping together in one room. The night was as expected hot and humid. I looked out of the window the sky was bare with no stars visible. As hours passed by, our loud chatting noises were replaced by soft snores. I was just about to doze off when the air conditioner and the ceiling fan stopped working. It didn’t take us long to realize that there is a power cut. We looked out of the window, it was pitch dark and sinisterly eerie. We waited for the lights to come on. There was dead silence in the room, but I was pretty sure that none of us were asleep. All of a sudden, we heard a loud “Boom” followed by a big explosion. And then there was another and another.  It didn’t take us long to realize that the LTTE had attacked Colombo. There were bullet shots that we heard.  Our security guard shouted to us that there is an LTTE attack and we should save ourselves. We collected our torches and rushed down stairs. Just then, my father’s mobile phone received the message from UN, confirming the attack on Colombo. The fear and sense of impending tragedy had gripped our terrified souls.  I was trembling with fear while sitting in the corner with Saruf who was crying of fear. I could hear my own heart beat . My father kept on assuring us that everything will be fine but deep down in his heart, he was also panicking. My mother started praying. We could hear the bullet and machine gun shots. From the window, we could see the sky lit up with fire and cracker like fire works. Each time I heard a bullet, shiver ran down my spine. All of a sudden, our house shook causing the windows to shatter.

We waited downstairs, for how long?? I have no idea as it seemed to be a long night. After some time it was all quite. The firing calmed down and there very few noises of any explosions.  We went back up stairs and sat motion-less for quite sometime in the living room.  My father was constantly trying to get some information from the Un Security , our friends and our guard to find the latest. The strident shrieks of our neighbors were heard.

It was the most horrifying experience of my life as I could feel as if I am the part of the horror movies which I used to enjoy so much before this incident. The actuality of the incident is known to everybody who was in Colombo that night and I am sure that none of us will ever forget these horrible moments.