NEW DELHI (Reuters): Five people were killed in two separate incidents in India's northeastern state of Manipur, police said on Sunday, as fresh ethnic violence erupted in the conflict-hit region.
Three men from the Kuki tribal group were killed in an exchange of gunfire between "unidentified armed miscreants" in the state's Noney district on Saturday, according to a police statement.
The bodies of two other men from the same community, who had gone missing earlier this week, were recovered in Kangpokpi district on Sunday morning after security personnel launched a search operation, a second police statement said.
A top Kuki tribal body blamed Naga separatist outfits for the killings, describing them as a "direct unprovoked assault . . . in their homeland."
The killings came amid mass protests attended by hundreds of thousands of people in the state capital Imphal and other areas, demanding the abrogation of a ceasefire arrangement between Kuki armed groups and the Indian state.
The predominantly Christian Kuki and Naga tribes have a long history of conflict over competing claims to ethnic homelands in the remote northeastern state.
The latest fighting erupted after a Naga man was allegedly assaulted by men from the Kuki community in February this year.
The killing of three Kuki pastors in May, allegedly by Naga armed groups, triggered a series of retaliatory abductions and killings by both sides.
The latest Kuki-Naga clashes have added to tensions in Manipur, where the Kuki community is also embroiled in a bloody ethnic conflict with the mainly Hindu Meitei community that began in May 2023 over economic benefits and job quotas.
More than 60,000 people displaced by the conflict, which has claimed more than 300 lives, continue to live in temporary shelters.
(Reporting by Tora Agarwala; editing by Mayank Bhardwaj and Raju Gopalakrishnan) -- Reuters
