At least 14 people were killed and more than 20 others injured after terrorists opened fire and hurled grenades at a busy market area in the northeastern Indian state of Assam Friday, a top police official said, Xinhua reported.
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Six rebels arrived in a motorised rickshaw and fired automatic weapons and lobbed grenades in the crowded market in Balajan, an area just outside the town of Kokrajhar in western Assam, said top local police official L.R. Bishnoi.
Indian police recovered an AK-47 rifle and explosives from a gunman who was killed by the security forces and are looking for three or four others in hiding.
Defence PRO Lt Col S Newton said, “we suspect there were at least three militants and one of them have been killed”.
However, Assam health minister Himanta Biswa Sarma on Saturday told reporters that slain militant has been identified as commander of 16th Battalion of the NDFB (S). After the attack speculations were rife about the involvement of several terror groups including ISIS. Sahay said that 12 people died on the spot when the militants, who came in a van around 12.30 pm, opened fire. The security forces eliminated one of the militants in an encounter soon after the incident.
The more militant Democratic Front group has not carried out any large-scale attacks since 2014 when 70 people in total were killed in Assam. “We still don’t know about the motivation for an attack of this nature”, a source says.
The Chief Minister told the media here that he had spoken to Modi and Home Minister Rajnath Singh and suggested that “a foreign hand” may be involved.
Assam, best known in the United Kingdom as a major tea producer, is a remote and underdeveloped state close to China and bordering Bhutan which has suffered from years of ethnic and tribal tensions. He added the Home Ministry was in touch with the Assam government and monitoring the situation closely.
He said, he is saddened by the attack and his thoughts and prayers are with the bereaved families and those injured.
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Minister of State for Home Affairs Kiren Rijiju condemned the attack, describing it as “very dastardly and unfortunate”.
