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| India-Pakistan |
| Separatists kill seven persons in India's northeast |
| 2003-03-30 |
| 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 |
| #1 Anyone interested in how newsworthy this little altercation is might want to check this site... http://www.satp.org/satporgtp/countries/india/states/tripura/index.html Evidently, its a big deal that the insurgency related deaths dropped to 175 (including 93 civilians) in 2002... sounds like a respectably high body count to me... |
| Posted by: Steve 2003-03-30 20:45:03 |