Manipur: Calm Shattered in Manipur as Militants Open Fire on Village; No Casualties Reported

IMPHAL: Days of uneasy calm in Manipur saw another round of violence flaring up on Tuesday night when suspected militants opened fire on Mongbung Meitei village in Jiribam district. The militants, wielding sophisticated weapons, launched a surprise attack on the village according to officials, but quick retaliation by armed village volunteers forced the assailants to flee the scene. The battle was intense and took half-an-hour, in which no casualties were reported.

The incident has also revisited concerns over the growth of insurgencies in the region. For months, tensions have been simmering, and combined security forces were soon despatched to the area, which launched an immediate combing operation to trace the militants responsible for the attack. Senior police officials are closely monitoring the sensitive situation since Jiribam is a mixed population area and is close to southern Assam.

Also, the authorities have appealed to the locals to cooperate with the security forces as they step up efforts to flush out militants from the area. No arrests have so far been reported but the security forces continue to conduct search operations in the surrounding dense terrain around the village.

The latest flare-up follows a spate of violent incidents in the earlier days of September in which 12 people, among them two women, lost their lives and 20 were injured. The clashes, allied with a spate of student protests against militant attacks, forced the Manipur government to close all educational institutions across the state on September 6.

Following 11 days of closure, schools, colleges and technical institutions finally reopened on Tuesday as the overall security scenario showed it could be getting a little better. The state government had clamped a week-long mobile Internet ban in the five key valley districts - Imphal West, Imphal East, Thoubal, Bishnupur and Kakching - following the recent bouts of violence. The mobile Internet ban that was brought into force on Monday was put on its head on Tuesday to prevent rumors and inflammatory messages from propagating during the period of disturb.

Meanwhile, curfews im­posed ac­ross five dis­tricts, in­clud­ing the state cap­i­tal Im­phal, have been re­laxed in the wake of de­clin­ing vi­o­lence. Author­i­ties in Im­phal East, Im­phal West, Bish­nupur, Thoubal, and Jiribam have now ex­tended curfew re­lax­a­tion to 10 to 13 hours each day, a sign that nor­malcy is grad­u­ally be­ing restored.

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