Imphal, Nov 9 (IANS): Unidentified armed assailants gunned down a Meitei woman in Manipur's Bishnupur district on Saturday, police said.

A police official in Imphal said that the unidentified men fired on Sapam Ongbi Sonia Devi when she was working in her paddy field at Saiton village in Bishnupur, killing her on the spot.

Though the police said that the identity of the attacker and the motive behind the killing remain unknown so far, local media blamed Kuki militants for the killing.

Police personnel led by senior officials have rushed to the area and launched a search operation to nab the assailants.

Villagers expressed shock and anguish over the incident. Further details of the incident are awaited.

Saturday’s incident occurred within 48 hours after the suspected militants killed another woman and burnt down at least eight houses at a tribal-dominated village Zairon in Manipur's Jiribam district on Thursday night.

Police officials in Imphal said that armed guerrillas attacked the Hmar tribal-inhabited village Zairon in Jiribam on Thursday night and set at least eight houses on fire. A woman named Sangkim, wife of Ngurthansang Hmar from Zairon, 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 Thursday night attack, 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.