Army kills 8 ULFA militants

At Least eight cadres of the outlawed United Liberation Front of Asom, including two women...

At Least eight cadres of the outlawed United Liberation Front of Asom ULFA, including two women, were killed in an Army operation in Lohit district of Arunachal Pradesh this morning. The operation, in an area adjoining the Tinsukia district in Upper Assam, is already being called the first major setback for ULFA since the Bhutan flush-out operations of December 2003.

Officials at the Army8217;s 2 Mountain Division headquarters in Dinjan in Upper Assam said the eight were killed in an encounter that lasted nearly four hours in a riverine area along the Lohit, a tributary of the Brahmaputra, close to the Manabhum reserved forest.

Though the militants were yet to be identified, intelligence sources said they appeared to be members of the ULFA8217;s 28th Battalion, responsible for the outfit8217;s activities in Upper Assam and eastern Arunachal areas. It was from the hideouts in Tirap, Changlang and Lohit districts of Arunachal Pradesh that the ULFA carried out attacks in January, killing over 80 people, mostly the Hindi-speaking, in the Upper Assam region.

The Army operation was launched on Sunday, the day Prime Minister Manmohan Singh reached Dibrugarh to lay the foundation stone of a Rs 5,460-crore mega Assam Gas Cracker Project. There were intelligence inputs that a batch of ULFA rebels had moved out of the Manabhum reserved forest and were headed north towards Lohit district in Arunachal Pradesh.

8220;While our forces were closely tracking them since Sunday, it was around 5 am today that an encounter took place in which two ULFA militants died,8221; an Army official told The Indian Express from the Dinjan division headquarters. The other ULFA cadres disappeared into the jungles and Army reinforcements went looking for them in the chaporis riverine sand-islands.

8220;Around 9.30 am, the two sides came face to face. A fierce exchange of fire took place, the Army killed six more, which included two women,8221; the official said. 8220;This is the biggest setback for the ULFA since the Bhutan operations,8221; he said.

Recently, the Arunachal Pradesh government had asked the Union Home Ministry to flush out ULFA militants from its territory. A visit by Prime Minister Manmohan Singh to Brahmakund in Lohit district has been cancelled thrice since October in view of the increased presence of ULFA rebels in the area.