Students take shelter near a stream amid gunfire near a foothill in Manipur
Imphal/New Delhi:
The crack and whizz of bullets pierced the quiet evening. Some school students took cover along a treeline behind a stream. In a video, with the sound of rapid gunfire audible, one of them is heard telling his friends, “That was very close”.
The incident happened on a day when Manipur reported gunfights at many areas between rival armed groups – who call themselves “village defence volunteers” – amid the ethnic tensions between the hill-majority Kuki-Zo tribes and the valley-majority Meiteis.
The students in the video said they were playing football in a field near the foothills in Pukhao when they first heard the whizz of bullets flying near them, followed by the crackling of bullets as the rounds got nearer and nearer.
“We were playing football when they shot at us,” a boy is heard saying in the video. His muddy feet extended over the stream, with no more space to move back.
Another boy in a yellow T-shirt, his back pressed on a groove of bamboo trees, clutched both knees and looked ahead as a bullet landed across the stream and kicked up dust.
“There, there, right there,” one of the boys pointed at the spot.
Pukhao in Imphal East is 15 km from Khamenlok, a village under the hill district Senapati, which has seen intense violence in the past nine months. The topography here is dense with both valley and hill regions.
Man killed, army officer injured
A 25-year-old man was killed in a gunfight between two armed groups in Pukhao, the police said today. An army officer was injured while approaching an area on the outskirts of Imphal East district from where gunfire was reported, the police said.
“The Junior Commissioned Officer was airlifted to a military hospital in Leimakhong. He is out of danger,” a police officer said.
