GUWAHATI: The anti-talks faction of the United Liberation Front of Assam (ULFA) on Monday claimed that Indian security forces carried out three drone attacks on one of its mobile camps in Myanmar on Sunday.
The outfit, which is led by Paresh Baruah, said one of the drone strikes left two of its members injured.
“The Indian occupational forces carried out three bomb attacks on a Myanmar-based mobile camp of the ULFA. The attacks were carried out on January 7 at 4:10 pm, 4:12 pm and 4:20 pm. The third bomb did not explode but the first two did in which two of our members sustained minor injuries,” the rebel group stated in a statement.
“If colonial India believes it can dissuade the leaders, officers and members of the ULFA from their cherished goal and ideology by such military operations carried out through occupational forces, then it is living in a fool’s paradise,” the statement further said.
Defence sources in Assam said they had no information on the attacks.
The ULFA’s Baruah-led faction operates out of the soil of Myanmar where it has its camps. After lying low for two and half years since Himanta Biswa Sarma took over as the Assam chief minister, the outfit stepped up its activities in recent times. It triggered three low-intensity blasts in upper Assam. Nobody was killed or injured but the explosions managed to shake up the establishment.
The other faction, led by Arabinda Rajkhowa-Anup Chetia, signed a peace agreement with the central government on December 29 last year, more than 34 years after the ULFA was founded in 1979.
Despite efforts, the government has not been able to bring the Baruah-led faction to the talks table. The outfit said it umpteen times that it is not opposed to peace talks but the sovereignty of Assam should be on the agenda. The ULFA was born to secure a sovereign Assam.