Tinsukia (Assam), January 17
The Army today intensified its offensive against the banned ULFA in Assam, killing two militants, arresting another five and busting two militant camps.
Two ULFA militants were killed in a shootout with the Army near Doomdooma tea estate in Tinsukia district of upper Assam this morning, the police said.
The area was cordoned off by the Army as it searched for rebels believed to be hiding there. The operation in the nearby Doomdooma Reserve Forest and adjacent jungles, where militants usually took shelter, had also been intensified, it said.
In another operation in the interior of the Monobhum Reserve Forest in Tirap district of neighbouring Arunachal Pradesh, troops of the Gorkha Regiment busted two ULFA camps while acting on a tip-off from villagers.
Defence sources here said the militants living in the camps escaped and a linkman, Shankar Chakma, who showed ULFA cadres the way through the dense and remote jungles, was nabbed.
Books with the location of top ULFA leaders, medicines, clothes and rations were found in the two camps that appeared to have been set up recently, the sources said.
The successes in the Army operations came a day after Prime Minister Manmohan Singh visited Assam and assured Hindi-speaking migrant workers, recently targeted by the ULFA, that fool-proof security would be provided to them.
— PTI
