GUWAHATI: Suspected militants attacked a mine-protected vehicle of the Assam Rifles in Manipur’s Tengnoupal district on Thursday morning, officials said. However, nobody was killed or injured. Defence sources said a group of personnel, attached to the 20th Assam Rifles Battalion, had moved out of their base for a routine patrol when they came under the attack.
“The suspected militants triggered an IED (improvised explosive device) on the road, followed by firing from small arms. The Assam Rifles personnel immediately retaliated and the attackers fled,” a defence official told this newspaper.
The police said soon after triggering the explosive, the gunmen fired indiscriminately at the vehicle. The official also said that the personnel escaped unscathed as they were travelling in the mine-protected vehicle. The security forces launched a combing operation to nab the perpetrators of the crime.
Recently, additional Assam Rifles troopers were air-lifted to the India-Myanmar border town of Moreh in the district to flush out militants who were suspected to be involved in the killing of a subdivisional police officer. Some insurgent groups from Manipur have their bases in Myanmar. Tengnoupal is one of the districts that were affected by the recent ethnic violence that left nearly 200 people dead and over 60,000 others displaced.