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Army stumble upon lethal explosives in Assam hills

August 03, 2009 21:56 IST
The army on Monday stumbled upon a huge quantity of explosive materials underneath a culvert in remote insurgents infested part of Karbi Anglong hill district in Assam and thereby might have foiled militants' design to strike terror in the run up to the Independence Day.

A security source informed that a team of army personnel recovered 14 kgs of ammonium nitrate, 5 kgs of gelatine, 50 electric detonators and 60 meter of safety fuse hidden in a gunny bag underneath a culvert by suspected militants at Amterang under Boithalangshu police station of Karbi Anglong hill district of Assam.

The recovered explosive materials would have sufficed to prepare a lot of powerful improvised explosive devices. The thickly wooded hill district mainly inhabited by Karbi tribe has been a hot bed of insurgency, and the Karbi tribe militant group Karbi Longri North Cachar Hills Liberation Front is most active there.

The outfit on Monday threatened to target Hindi-speaking people and trains plying through the district in case the government failed to respond to its talks' offer within two months.

The KLNLF operates in collusion with the banned United Liberation Front of Asom and is notorious for targeting Hindi-speaking sugarcane farmers, trains and government property in the hill district.

Assam government had earlier put 17 preconditions for talks with the outfit which expressed its desire for dialogue in January this year. The outfit has rejected five of the 17 pre-conditions put forward by Assam government through the state polices intelligence branch.

The KLNLF has warned that it was running out of patience and would carry out major strikes in the hill district from October if the government failed to respond to its unilateral peace overture and truce that started in January this year.

K Anurag in Guwahati