By IANS,
Guwahati/Aizawl : Seven militants were killed in Assam and a large cache of arms was recovered in a crackdown by security forces in the northeast, police said here Friday.
“All together six National Democratic Front of Bodoland (NDFB) militants and a United Liberation Front of Asom (ULFA) rebel were gunned down and two NDFB ultras were arrested in different places of Sonitpur district in the past 24 hours,” an Assam police spokesman said.
“Based on specific information about the presence of militants, army personnel and state police launched separate operations in northern Assam and killed seven of them.” Four NDFB rebels were killed Friday.
In a different incident, suspected ULFA guerrillas killed a pharmacist, Nyanajytoi Goswami, 48, and injured a relative, Jyotish Sharma, at Darrang district Thursday night.
Although the NDFB, a rebel group fighting for a separate homeland for the Bodo tribe in Assam since 1996, had entered into a ceasefire agreement with New Delhi in 2005, they had reportedly been indulging in extortion from villagers and businessmen in northern Assam.
In another incident, the security forces recovered a cache of arms and ammunition, including 10 kg of explosives, two .9 mm pistols, 66 detonators, two wireless sets and some AK 47 rifle ammunition from Sadiya in the Sonitpur-Lakhimpur border in northeast Assam.
Meanwhile, the Mizoram police seized a huge cache of ammunition while these were being handed over to insurgent groups through a middleman and arrested four people, including two policemen, in capital Aizawl Thursday.
“Ammunition for sophisticated arms had been collected by the two arrested policemen from a firing range one month ago and was being sold to militants,” a Mizoram police spokesman said.