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Separatists kill seven persons in India's northeast
At least seven persons, including five paramilitary troopers, were killed in an ambush by tribal separatists in India's northeastern state of Tripura, officials Sunday said. A senior police official told IRNA by telephone from the state capital Agartala that heavily armed militants of the outlawed National Liberation Front of Tripura (NLFT) Saturday attacked a jeep carrying soldiers of the Railway Protection Special Force (RPSF) near the village Eskapara, 130 kilometers north of Agartala. Five RPSF soldiers and two civilians, including the driver and a caretaker of the vehicle, died on the spot. The militants decamped with three carbines and two self-loading rifles obtained from the dead troopers. The RPSF soldiers were on the way to providing security cover in a nearby area where railway track construction work was underway. NLFT militants in the past two years kidnapped at least 50 railway construction workers and later released them, taking a huge amount of ransom money. The NLFT, fighting for an independent tribal homeland, currently operates out of bases inside adjoining Bangladesh to carry out their hit-and-run guerilla strikes on Indian soldiers.More glorified banditti on Islam's bloody border... Posted by: Fred Pruitt 2003-03-30 |
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