NEW DELHI : A flight from India landed at the Palaly airfield in Jaffna in northern Sri Lanka on Thursday marking its opening for international flights and passenger traffic for the first time in a decade, Indian officials said.
The Palaly airfield was previously designated a military facility that served the Sri Lankan Air Force during the three decade long civil war. With the war ending in 2009, Sri Lanka, with assistance provided by the Indian government, has upgraded the airfield into the Jaffna International Airport that will be used for civilian traffic. The preliminary pact to develop the airport was signed in 2005. Jaffna in northern Sri Lanka has seen as a key town in the Sri Lankan Tamil dominated region that shares close cultural and religious affinities with India’s more than 70 million Tamils in southern Tamil Nadu state.
