Guwahati, India:
India’s army chief pledged on Friday to intensify a military offensive in Assam as it tries to track down separatist rebels who killed more than 80 villagers in the restive northeastern state this week.
India has already deployed 6,000 additional security forces and military helicopters to scour the remote area where armed militants mounted a series of coordinated attacks on tribal villagers.
Police have blamed the attacks on the outlawed National Democratic Front of Bodoland (NDFB), which has waged a violent decades-long campaign for an independent homeland for the Bodo.
“We are definitely going to intensify operations,” army chief Dalbir Singh Suhag told reporters after meeting home minister Rajnath Singh in New Delhi to discuss the security situation in Assam.
India also sought cooperation from Bhutan, Myanmar and Bangladesh, officials said on Friday.
Some militants may have fled to neighbouring Bhutan while their leader was believed to be in Myanmar, officials and police said, prompting calls for cooperation.
“We are determined to hunt down the rebels and destroy their base, both in the country and outside,” India’s junior home minister Kiren Rijiju said.
Assam is one of the seven states that make up India’s remote northeast, home to more than 200 tribes and dozens of insurgencies, some seeking greater autonomy and others secession.
The latest attacks, in which half the victims were women and children, have shaken Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government that came to power promising economic growth as well as a militarily secure India.
“This is terrorism, there is zero-tolerance for terrorism,” Home Minister Rajnath Singh, who flew to Assam to commiserate with the families of the victims, told reporters.
The northeast is wedged between China, Myanmar, Bangladesh and Bhutan, and militants are known to criss-cross borders that run through thickly forested mountains.
Assam police say the leader of the NDFB, I.K. Sonbijit, is based in Myanmar, from where he controls his cadres.
He is believed to have ordered this week’s attacks in retaliation for a army offensive against his group in which he lost 40 men and a large quantity of arms and ammunition.
More than 14,000 people have taken shelter in dozens of temporary camps set by the government after Bodo insurgents attacked tribal villages in India’s northeastern state of Assam, police said on Friday.
The insurgents say they represent ethnic Bodo tribal people and have been demanding an independent state comprising large tracts of north-western Assam.
They routinely attack Muslim settlers in the region and the Adivasi tribal people who were brought in by British colonists from what are currently the states of Chhattisgarh and Jharkhand in central and eastern India.
“They have been working in tea gardens and doing farming in this area since the late 19th century,” Bishnoi said.
Television footage showed large numbers of people milling around open areas alongside schools and community centres where the local administration had provided them with food and utensils.
“It is difficult to estimate the total number of people in the camps as many of the menfolk go back in groups to the village during the day and return again at night,” Sonitpur police official Betul Chetia said.
Police officials in both districts described the situation as tense but stable. They said there were no fresh incidents of violence since Wednesday morning.
There were several road blockades across the state with student unions and other political groups calling for protests but no violent incidents, police said.
Additional paramilitary troops had also arrived in the region and were in the process of being deployed, Bishnoi said.
Speaking to reporters in New Delhi after a meeting with federal Home Minister Rajnath Singh on the security situation in Assam, Army chief Dalbir Singh Suhag said the army would be intensifying operations in Assam.
