Police have arrested three people and are investigating whether local militants received help from other terrorist groups in carrying out coordinated attacks that killed at least 77 people in India’s troubled northeast, officials said.
Two people were taken into custody on Saturday because their vehicles — a car and a motorcycle — are believed to have been used in two of the 13 blasts that rocked Assam state on Thursday, said Bhaskar Jyoti Mahanta, a state inspector-general of police.
Police also arrested Nazir Ahmed, whose cellphone was allegedly used by a little-known group to send a text message to television station News Live claiming responsibility for the attacks, Mahanta said.
PHOTO: AP
R. Chandranathan, another state inspector-general of police, said the group, calling itself the Islamic Security Force (Indian Mujahadeen), also thanked its partners in the text message and warned of future attacks.
Chandranathan, who is heading the police investigation, said the group came into existence in 2000 mainly to thwart attacks by Bodo tribespeople on Muslim settlers in Assam state, but that nothing had been heard of it since then.
Police were unaware of the group’s activities and were trying to identify the partners mentioned in the message, he said.
The name echoes that of the Indian Mujahideen, a group unknown until May when it said it was behind bombings in Jaipur that killed 61 people. It also claimed responsibility for blasts in the western state of Gujarat in July that killed at least 45, and blasts in New Delhi in September that killed 21.
Police have said the state’s largest separatist group, the United Liberation Front of Asom (ULFA), is the main target of the investigation, but a spokesman for the ULFA has denied the group had any role in the blasts.
ULFA is one of the largest and most feared of several dozen militant groups active in the region, having launched dozens of attacks since it took up arms in 1979.
Most of the groups want independent homelands in India’s northeast, an isolated region wedged between Bangladesh, Bhutan, China and Myanmar with only a thin corridor connecting it to the rest of India. Its residents are ethnically closer to Myanmar and China than India.
The region has also seen repeated violence between indigenous tribes and migrants from other parts of India. Last year, militants massacred about 70 migrant workers from northern India, and last month more than 50 people were killed in violence between members of the Bodo tribe and mostly Muslim migrants.
A beauty queen who pulled out of the Miss South Africa competition when her nationality was questioned has said she wants to relocate to Nigeria, after coming second in the Miss Universe pageant while representing the West African country. Chidimma Adetshina, whose father is Nigerian, was crowned Miss Universe Africa and Oceania and was runner-up to Denmark’s Victoria Kjar Theilvig in Mexico on Saturday night. The 23-year-old law student withdrew from the Miss South Africa competition in August, saying that she needed to protect herself and her family after the government alleged that her mother had stolen the identity of a South
BELT-TIGHTENING: Chinese investments in Cambodia are projected to drop to US$35 million in 2026 from more than US$420 million in 2021 At a ceremony in August, Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Manet knelt to receive blessings from saffron-robed monks as fireworks and balloons heralded the breaking of ground for a canal he hoped would transform his country’s economic fortunes. Addressing hundreds of people waving the Cambodian flag, Hun Manet said China would contribute 49 percent to the funding of the Funan Techo Canal that would link the Mekong River to the Gulf of Thailand and reduce Cambodia’s shipping reliance on Vietnam. Cambodia’s government estimates the strategic, if contentious, infrastructure project would cost US$1.7 billion, nearly 4 percent of the nation’s annual GDP. However, months later,
HOPEFUL FOR PEACE: Zelenskiy said that the war would ‘end sooner’ with Trump and that Ukraine must do all it can to ensure the fighting ends next year Russia’s state-owned gas company Gazprom early yesterday suspended gas deliveries via Ukraine, Vienna-based utility OMV said, in a development that signals a fast-approaching end of Moscow’s last gas flows to Europe. Russia’s oldest gas-export route to Europe, a pipeline dating back to Soviet days via Ukraine, is set to shut at the end of this year. Ukraine has said it would not extend the transit agreement with Russian state-owned Gazprom to deprive Russia of profits that Kyiv says help to finance the war against it. Moscow’s suspension of gas for Austria, the main receiver of gas via Ukraine, means Russia now only
‘HARD-HEADED’: Some people did not evacuate to protect their property or because they were skeptical of the warnings, a disaster agency official said Typhoon Man-yi yesterday slammed into the Philippines’ most populous island, with the national weather service warning of flooding, landslides and huge waves as the storm sweeps across the archipelago nation. Man-yi was still packing maximum sustained winds of 185kph after making its first landfall late on Saturday on lightly populated Catanduanes island. More than 1.2 million people fled their homes ahead of Man-yi as the weather forecaster warned of a “life-threatening” effect from the powerful storm, which follows an unusual streak of violent weather. Man-yi uprooted trees, brought down power lines and smashed flimsy houses to pieces after hitting Catanduanes in the typhoon-prone
RSS