NEW DELHI: Indian police in Manipur state on Monday battled with the Kuki minority forces, killing at least 10 people after their station was attacked, a district official said on Monday.

One officer was wounded as they “repulsed an attack on a police station”, Krishna Kumar, deputy commissioner of the state’s Jiribam district said, adding that “10 bodies of miscreants have been recovered so far”.

The violence is the latest in a simmering conflict that broke out in Manipur in May 2023, between the predominantly Hindu Mei­tei majority and the mainly Christian Kuki community.

Those killed come from the Hmar people, a sm­aller group within the Kuki.

The violence comes after the burned corpse of a Kuki woman was found in the district last week, sparking fury.

At least 200 people have since been killed in the violence, and communities have splintered into rival groups across swaths of the state, which borders war-torn Myanmar.

After months of relative calm, an uptick in violence in September killed at least 11 people, including by insurgents reportedly firing rockets and dropping bombs with drones.

Longstanding tensions between the Meitei and Kuki communities revolve around competition for land and public jobs.

Rights activists have accused local leaders of exacerbating ethnic divisions for political gain.

Manipur is ruled by Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party.

Published in Dawn, November 12th, 2024