By IANS
Agartala : The northeastern states of Tripura and Mizoram, besides certain stretches of Assam and Manipur, remained cut off from the rest of the country for the eighth straight day Tuesday after a road bridge collapsed on the Assam-Agartala national highway.
Border Road Task Force (BRTF) engineers and hundreds of labourers have been working round-the-clock to repair the steel bridge at Malidarah on National Highway 44, near the Assam-Meghalaya border.
"We are expecting to restore road communications by Wednesday with work going on a war-footing," said S.K. Tripathi, BRTF commanding officer.
Hundreds of trucks carrying essentials to Tripura, Mizoram and parts of Manipur remained stranded. Passenger buses were also suspended on the national highway, the lifeline for landlocked Tripura and Mizoram.
"The Military Engineering Services (MES) is also helping us to restore communication," Tripathi, who along with other BRTF officials is overseeing repair work of the bridge, told IANS over phone from Malidarah.
Prices of essentials, including LPG cylinders, have shot up in Tripura due to the bridge collapse.