5 militants, army major killed in northeast India
Deuba takes helm in Nepal
NEW DELHI, June 7: An Indian army major and five suspected militants were killed in a gunfight in a remote northeastern Indian state close to the border with Myanmar, police said Wednesday.
The gunfight broke out late Tuesday after troops raided a militant hideout in the forests of Mon district in Nagaland state following an intelligence tip-off.
The militants lobbed grenades and fired with automatic rifles at the troops, triggering a nearly eight-hour gunfight.
“The officer was killed in the initial assault and two soldiers were injured. Five terrorists have been killed,” Nagaland police chief LL Doungel told AFP.
Search operations are still on in the area to prevent militants from escaping to Myanmar, he said.
The guerillas are suspected members of organisations that in turn are part of a broad mix of militant groups in the northeast fighting against Indian rule.
The United Liberation Front of Western South East Asia is based in Myanmar and its militants are active in most of the seven northeastern states.
It was blamed for the 2015 attack on an army convoy in Manipur state that left 20 soldiers dead, prompting India to carryout strikes inside Myanmar against the rebels.
Northeast India, linked to the rest of the country by a narrow land corridor, has seen decades of unrest among ethnic and separatist groups.
Curfew in force after farmer killings:
A round-theclock curfew was in force Wednesday in a central Indian district where five farmers were killed in clashes with police during protests to demand loan waivers and higher prices for their crops.
Mobile internet was cut off and thousands of police in riot gear patrolled the streets of the Mandsaur district of Madhya Pradesh state after the violence on Tuesday.
Organisers say police opened fire after the protest turned violent on Tuesday, with some throwing rocks, torching vehicles and firing at riot police.
S K Singh, a senior government official in Mandsaur, told AFP the situation was broadly under control and the curfew would be lifted once the situation improved.
Deuba takes helm in Nepal:
Sher Bahadur Deuba, who Tuesday became prime minister for the fourth time, is a sharp political operator who has swept in and out of power through a series of alliances typical of the horsetrading that defines Nepali politics.
Deuba last held power in the final years of the brutal 10-year civil war, which claimed more than 16,000 lives and displaced thousands. His failure to bring an end to the conflict prompted King Gyanendra Shah to retake control of the country in 2005, removing Deuba as prime minister.
The return to royal rule was short-lived. Popular protests against the king saw a democratic government retake control the following year and sign an agreement with the Maoists to end the conflict.
EU to screen B’desh goods:
The European Union has slapped new security screening on imports from Bangladesh, a move that is likely to make it costlier for businesses in the South Asian country to sell products to EU nations.
Just over half of Bangladeshi exports go to the European bloc, accounting for $18.68 billion in revenues during the last fiscal year. Those shipments, by air or sea, will now have to be screened by bomb-detecting dogs and devices.
Bangladesh has none of these facilities, so cargo will have to be routed through a third country where security screening is possible.
Power struggle seen within IS:
A letter drafted by a senior Islamic State militant and obtained by The Associated Press points to a growing power struggle within the group’s Afghan affiliate, pitting notoriously fierce Uzbek fighters against Pakistanis seen as too close to that country’s powerful intelligence service.
The rumblings of discontent come as the IS affiliate, which refers to itself as the Khorasan Province, is at war with both the US-backed government and the more wellestablished Taleban, with which it differs on tactics, leadership and ideology. The IS affiliate emerged in 2014 and refers to itself as the Khorasan Province, an ancient term for an area that includes parts of Afghanistan, Iran and Central Asian states.