On June 7, 1995, the Sri Lankan Air Force carried out a devastating bombing raid on a church in the northern town of Navaly, killing at least 147 people sheltering inside. The attack occurred during the brutal civil war between the government and the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE), a militant organization seeking an independent Tamil state. What made the bombing especially tragic was that civilians had taken refuge in the church on the explicit advice of the Air Force itself, which had warned people to seek shelter in places of worship before the strike. The death toll made it one of the deadliest single incidents targeting civilians during the twelve-year conflict.

The Sri Lankan civil war had raged since 1983, born from decades of systemic discrimination against the island's Tamil minority by the Sinhalese-dominated government. The LTTE, led by Velupillai Prabhakaran, sought to establish Tamil Eelam in the northeastern regions where Tamils were concentrated. By 1995, the conflict had claimed thousands of lives and displaced hundreds of thousands more. The government's military response had grown increasingly aggressive, and the LTTE had developed into a formidable fighting force with its own air wing and sophisticated weaponry. The frontlines shifted constantly across the island's northern Jaffna Peninsula and eastern regions, with civilians caught between two sides willing to use brutal tactics.

The Navaly church bombing exemplified the war's horrific toll on non-combatants. In the confusion and terror of active warfare, the line between military targets and civilian spaces blurred catastrophically. The incident sparked international outcry and raised questions about whether the bombing was a calculated war crime or a tragic miscalculation. The war would continue for another fourteen years until 2009, ultimately killing an estimated 70,000 to 100,000 people, with the fate of Tamil civilians remaining contested in historical accounts. The Navaly bombing stands as one of the conflict's starkest reminders of how religious sanctuaries offered no protection in a civil war marked by indiscriminate violence.