Correspondent
IMPHAL, Sep 1: At least four villages came under attack with several houses in two of the villages burnt down as violence escalated in Manipur’s Kangpokpi district on Tuesday.
Two villagers, including a pastor, were also injured in the latest attacks that came barely a day after an attack on the Naga inhabited villages along the IT Road in which three persons, including two women, were killed and four others injured in an attack by a group of armed miscreants at Teikhang, a Kuki village in the same Kangpokpi district, early Monday. In the attack, at least two houses were also reduced to ashes.
The injured villagers were G Abonmai and pastor Luithuibou Newmai of Tapon Naga Baptist Church sustained bullet injuries. The critically wounded pastor was shot by the attackers while attempting to flee to safety during the attack.
The four villages that came under attacks by heavily armed miscreants, who the villagers suspected Kuki militants, were Pipuram, Makui Khunjao, Tapon and Thonglang Akutpa under T Waichong subdivision of Kangpokpi district.
Over 100 houses of the Liangmai (Naga) tribe were affected by Tuesday’s attack as per the sources
The villages are located along the IT (Imphal-Tamei) Road, the epicenter of the recent series of attacks on both Naga and Kuki inhabited villages had taken place.
Two of the villages were almost uprooted with the attackers setting almost all the houses on fire before looting and destroying the belongings of the houses.
The attacks, according to local sources, began around 4 am at Pipuram village and then neighbouring Makui village. After torching almost all the houses at the two villages, the attackers fired indiscriminately towards the other adjoining villages – Tapon and Thonglang Akutpa.
It was during the attack at Tapon village that a pastor sustained bullet injuries as per the sources.
Blaming the Kuki militants behind the attacks, Makui Village Authority, in a statement, alleged the attackers fired indiscriminately then set ablaze houses while destroying all properties, food grains and belongings.
The village authority condemned the “inhuman act” of Kuki militants who attacked the villages and burnt down the houses.
Tuesday ’s attack came barely six days after four villagers of Makui village were killed in an ambush on a vehicle by the suspected militants at a place between Makui Ashang and Thanamba villages along the IT Road.
The Makui Village Authority alleged that the continuous attacks on Liangmai Naga villages along the IT Road were “direct attempt to wipe out Liangmai Naga from IT Road areas and to grab our ancestral land.”
Following the attacks, a column of CRPF personnel stationed at Chawangkining areas moved toward the affected villages late in the day, around 12.30 pm, the sources said.