Militants attacked Manipur Police commandos inside their barracks in the border town of Moreh on Saturday night, during which they also fired rocket-propelled grenades (RPG), officials aware of the matter said. The barracks were damaged and four commandos sustained minor injuries.
The attack on the commandos was reported from Moreh, hours after another unit of the Manipur Police commandos travelling on the Imphal-Moreh highway was attacked during the day. One commando sustained splinter injuries when the convoy came under heavy fire around 3.45pm on Saturday.
“The situation was under control after the afternoon incident. But around midnight, militants fired the RPG and heavy gunfire to attack the commandos sleeping inside the barrack at around midnight. Four of them sustained minor injuries. One of them may have sustained damages to his ear because of the blast of the explosives,” an official aware of the matter said.
The four commandos were rushed to the nearby hospital of the Assam Rifles.
The militants, who were hiding in the hills, officials said, used the cover of the night and engaged in firing at the barracks for almost half an hour.
Following the incident, top officials of the Assam Rifles have flown to Moreh, a border town near the India-Myanmar border. Moreh has been on high alert since Saturday afternoon.
Kaikholal Haokip, spokesperson of the Kuki Inpi Tengnoupal, an umbrella group for Kuki residents of Tengnouplal, confirmed that unidentified gunmen had attacked the commandos around midnight. “Senior officers of Assam Rifles have come to Moreh after last night’s incident. Curfew has been imposed again and the security forces are holding meetings. The situation is tense,” Haokip said.
Moreh comes under the administrative jurisdiction of Tengnoupal district.
The nearly one-month-long peace in ethnic strife-torn Manipur was punctuated on Saturday morning when a gunfight broke out between Meitei and Kuki village volunteers, in which one person died. Before Saturday, 13 people were killed in a gunfight on December 4 in Tengnoupal district.
Manipur has been in the throes of ethnic violence since early May as clashes erupted between the Meiteis, the most populous community in the state, and the tribal Kukis. While a bulk of the violence took place in the days after May 3, attacks between communities have continued intermittently ever since.
The violence has seen 197 lives lost, according to government numbers, and over 50,000 from both communities displaced from their homes, with Meiteis from the Kuki-dominated hills fleeing for their lives, and Kukis from the Meitei-dominated Imphal valley chased out of their homes. The tension has also seen the creation of community-based armed “village defence volunteers” that are often armed.
On Saturday morning at around 3.30 am, senior police officials said, there was an exchange of fire between village defence volunteers of the Kuki and Meitei communities. “This took place between the hill ranges of Nakhujang and Singda Kuki villages under Kangchup police station. The exchange of fire lasted till around 4.20am,” the police officer said.