A Sri Lankan army photograph taken after the last battle of the civil war in 2009 Sri Lankan Government/Reuters
When Kannaki was hit by a phosphorus shell, she was six months pregnant, lying huddled in a bunker with 15 other Tamils while an artillery bombardment raged around them for hour after hour.
As Sri Lanka’s 26-year war against Tamil separatists reached its final and most deadly phase, Kannaki was crammed with about 300,000 other civilians into a narrow area of jungle where rebels belonging to the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam were mounting a last, desperate stand against the Army.
It was then that her, and the rebels’, luck finally ran out. A fragment of shell struck her thigh,…[rest of article must be paid for].