Date:12/05/2008 URL: http://www.thehindu.com/2008/05/12/stories/2008051254491200.htm

National

8 construction workers shot dead

Sushanta Talukdar

Guwahati: Suspected militants of Dima Halam Daogah (Jewel faction), also known as Black Widow, gunned down eight construction workers in an interior village in Assam’s North Cachar Hills district on Sunday. Earlier on Saturday night the outfit gunned down a railway employee at Wadengdisa railway station of the hill district.

Principal Secretary, Home, Subhash Das told The Hindu that suspected militants of Black Widow went to a construction site of ongoing Broad Guage conversion project at Thoibasti near Fiding under Mahur police station and started firing indiscriminately on the workers there.

Eight workers died on the spot. Six of the eight victims have been identified as workers belonging to Muslim community hailing from nearby Cachar district.

The incident came about one and half month after the outfit had declared unilateral ceasefire.

The attacks by Black Widow militants on Saturday night and on Sunday afternoon came close on the heels of busting of a camp of the militant outfit at Herelu close to tri-juncture of Assam-Nagaland-Manipur border on Sunday morning.

In another incident two militants of United Liberation Front of Asom were killed at Basmari in lower Assam’s Barpeta district during an operation by the troops of the Red Horns Division of the Army on Sunday.