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... |