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GUWAHATI, Aug 21: Twenty-five Indian policemen and paramilitary soldiers were killed in Assam and Tripura on Wednesday and Tuesday by suspected militants, officials said.
In Tripura, tribal separatists killed 20 paramilitary soldiers in an ambush on Tuesday. The state ground to a halt on Wednesday as a 24-hour strike called to protest the killing came into effect, police said.
In Assam five policemen were killed went a remote-controlled bomb exploded near a bus, which was travelling through village Maladhara, 140kms west of the state capital, Guwahati.
The injured have all been rushed to hospital, but five are in critical condition.
Police said they suspected militant outfit United Liberation Front of Assam (ULFA) had carried out the attack as the area was their stronghold.
The ULFA, fighting for an independent homeland, operates out of well-entrenched bases inside Bhutan for staging hit-and-run strikes on Indian soldiers in Assam.
Army, police, and paramilitary soldiers have started a massive combing operation in the area where the explosion occurred.
The incident happened close to the site of an attack by militants on August 14 when they killed 15 traders.
More than 10,000 people have lost their lives to insurgency in Assam in the past two decades.
TRIPURA: Tripura’s communist chief minister Manik Sarkar, meanwhile, called on New Delhi to send in federal troops to help crack down on the insurgency.
“Unless the federal government dispatches army soldiers immediately the insurgency situation in the state will become worse,” Sarkar said.
“There is no other option to control militancy in Tripura other than inducting the army for anti-insurgency operations.”
The strike was called jointly by the ruling leftist government and the opposition Congress against the worst-ever attack on the security forces by the rebels.
Heavily armed fighters of the outlawed National Liberation Front of Tripura (NLFT) on Tuesday morning attacked a security convoy of the Tripura State Rifles (TSR) near Amarendranagar village, 60 kilometres southeast of the state capital Agartala, killing 19 on the spot.
One trooper later died in hospital. A police spokesman said shops and businesses downed shutters on Wednesday while the roads were empty of traffic.
“Normal life has come to a total halt and it is very unlikely that any government offices will function today,” the police spokesman told AFP by telephone from Agartala.
The ruling Communist Party of India (Marxist) called the strike to drum up public support for its fight against militancy, while the opposition Congress has demanded the resignation of the government.
“The Communist government has failed miserably in tackling insurgency, with many of the ruling party leaders in cahoots with various underground groups,” Tripura state Congress president Birajit Sinha told AFP.
The Tripura administration says the state’s 856-kilometre unfenced border with neighbouring Bangladesh is the main reason the tribal insurgency is flourishing.
“The porous border helps the militants in carrying out attacks and then sneaking back to their bases inside Bangladesh,” Sarkar said.
“We have been asking the federal government to urgently put up barbed wire fencing on the border to check militancy in Tripura.”
Sarkar urged New Delhi to send in federal troops to help tackle the militancy after some 3,000 soldiers engaged in counter-insurgency operations in Tripura were withdrawn.
Sarkar claimed the state government was not consulted over the withdrawals, which left only local police and paramilitary soldiers to battle the rebels.—AFP
