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GUWAHATI, April 4—Alarmed at the ethnic flare-up in Cachar district areas along the Assam-Mizoram border where Hmar People’s Conference (HPC) extremists have killed at least 23 Dimasa villagers, the State Assembly today decided to rush an all-party team headed by the Speaker Prithbi Majhi to take stock of the situation in the violence-affected areas. The speaker announced that the House team would leave early tomorrow even as the Chief Minister Tarun Gogoi underlined the need for evolving a coordinated mechanism by all the NE States to fight insurgency jointly.

In response to a Zero Hour...

April 4: A day after Ulfa militants attempted to blow up an LPG bottling plant near Guwahati, security forces intercepted coded wireless messages about the banned outfit’s plans to carry out a series of strikes in the run-up to its “raising day” on April 7.

Army units operating in Upper Assam, especially the contiguous districts of Dibrugarh and Tinsukia, were placed on maximum alert immediately after the messages were intercepted. One of the messages was “Let’s go for the Bihu dance”, probably alluding to an order to strike at an unspecified target.

The Ulfa was formed on April 7, 1979, in...

Dimapur, April 3: Naga Hoho president M. Vero today said the search for a political solution to insurgency in Nagaland should not be affected by the success or failure of efforts to unite warring factions.

Addressing a seminar here on ?Reconciliation, peace and unity?, the man who heads the apex organisation of Naga tribes said ?internal issues? must be dealt with separately to ensure that the pace of the ongoing political dialogue does not slacken.

Vero?s statement marks a departure from the popular view that the Naga peace process will remain a one-sided affair until the entire community...

GUWAHATI, April 3 — Chief Minister Tarun Gogoi today informed that the Government of India was yet to take any concrete initiative to man the unguarded Indo-Bhutan border in the State to prevent infiltration of extremists from their camps in Himalayan kingdom. Talking to newsmen here this morning, Sri Gogoi said, “Although the State Government has been insisting on deployment of the BSF along the unmanned Indo-Bhutan border, the Centre has decided to deploy SSB personnel. However, no step has been taken so far to deploy even the SSB along the international border through which ULFA and NDFB...

GUWAHATI, April 3: In one of the most gruesome incidents of terrorist violence in the State, the bodies of 22 persons kidnapped by Hmar People’s Convention (HPC) in Cachar district were recovered this evening from the dense jungles at Nastul Pahar, five kilometres from Sonai PS in Cachar district. It may be mentioned that 28 persons from the Dimasa community of three villages of Cachar district were kidnapped by the Hmar ultra outfit. Police said that the victims of the massacre were shot from a very close range and were killed the very next day after their abduction. Most of the bodies were...