[4][5] The LTTE stated that this expulsion was carried out in retaliation for Muslim participation in atrocities committed against Tamils in the Eastern Province.
The situation was further aggravated with the creation of the Muslim Home Guard by the Sri Lankan Government, leading to violent clashes between the two communities.
However, in the Tamil-majority Northern Province where Muslims were a small minority, the relations between the two communities were peaceful.
[12] The plan to expel the northern Muslims was initiated by Karikalan, the LTTE's political head of the Eastern Province.
[12] As a result, LTTE cadres from the Eastern Province, where anti-Muslim feeling was rife, were brought to the north to carry out the expulsion.
The turn of Jaffna came on 30 October 1990, when LTTE trucks drove through the streets ordering Muslim families to assemble at Osmania College.
In total, over 14,400 Muslim families, roughly 72,000 people, were forcibly evicted from LTTE-controlled areas of the Northern Province.
Tareek, a former resident of Jaffna, recounted the expulsion as follows:[19] "People believed you could take what you could carry, but at every junction the LTTE took things from us...they told us, "If you ever talk about this, we will shoot you."
"In a 1994 interview with the BBC, the LTTE leader Velupillai Prabhakaran expressed his regret over the expulsion and stated that the Muslims belonged to Jaffna and would permit their resettlement once normalcy was restored.
[21][22] Balasingham also expressed that the expulsion of the Muslims from Jaffna was a political blunder which could not be justified and said that the LTTE leadership would be willing to resettle them in the northern district.
[citation needed] On October 10, 2012, the government of Sri Lanka published several gazettes that effectively expanded the Wilpattu National Park's boundary to include northern provinces' regions.