Imphal, Nov 11 (IANS): Armed attackers from the hills fired from their automatic weapons and threw bombs in Manipur's Imphal East district on Sunday, police said.
A police official in Imphal said that combined security forces of the army (Mahar regiment), Border Security and police have rushed to the areas and retaliated the firing leading to a heavy exchange of fire between the two sides at Thamnapokpi village.
The armed cadres also fired many powerful bombs on the villagers and the security forces.
Tension prevailed in the Thamnapokpi village and adjoining areas.
During the past few days, farmers in a few districts were unable to work in their paddy fields due to the firing of armed attackers from hilltops towards the low-lying fields.
To prevent the situation from escalating further, the Manipur Police deployed additional forces in the trouble-torn and vulnerable areas.
Meanwhile, unidentified armed assailants gunned down Sapam Ongbi Sonia Devi, a woman belonging to the Meitei community in Bishnupur district on Saturday (November 9).
The attackers fired on Devi when she was working in her paddy field at Saiton village and she died on the spot.
Saturday’s incident occurred within 48 hours after the suspected militants killed another woman named Sangkim and burnt down at least eight houses at Hmar tribal-dominated village Zairon in Manipur's Jiribam district on November 7.
The woman had been burnt by the fire which engulfed her home. Local sources report that the remains of her burned body were later dismembered by the militants.
During the sudden November 7 attack, panic-stricken villagers, including children, women, and elderly people, managed to flee to safer places.
Meanwhile, recently two abandoned farmhouses were also set on fire by suspected militants in the Nungkhal area in the same Jiribam district.
The mixed-populated Jiribam district, adjoining Assam, has witnessed several incidents of violence this year, though the overall situation in the district had been relatively peaceful even after ethnic violence broke out in many other districts of the northeastern state since May last year.