On the last day of 2023, there was bloodshed in Manipur’s border town of Moreh, ranging from a midday ambush on a police convoy by suspected militants to an evening rocket-propelled grenade (RPG) strike on the police commando barracks.
In addition to the one injured in the ambush on Saturday, four police commandos were hurt in the RPG strike. At a “key location point” close to the Assam Rifles in Moreh, elite police commandos were ambushed to launch the initial attack. This incident on Saturday resulted in injuries to a commando.
At 11:40 p.m., suspected Kuki rebels started fire on a police barrack and directed their focused fire on the police camp, causing the situation to become exceedingly unstable.
According to accounts, the firefight carried on throughout the night as the police commandos retaliated. As they were turning in for the night, the attack caught them off guard and resulted in the injuries of four commandos.
The walls of the barrack had shrapnel holes visible. The wounded commandos were brought to the Moreh medical center of the Assam Rifles. Standing at the location of the RPG launch, a police commando indicated the little window that the missile had broken through.
In a statement, the Kuki group Indigenous Tribal Leaders Forum (ITLF) said that Peter Mate, a resident of Moreh, had been detained and subjected to abuse by the police. According to the ITLF, Mr. Mate, a local school teacher and the youth secretary of St. George Catholic Church, was taken into custody on Saturday night during the gunfire between the commandos and the suspected insurgents as he was leaving for home.
In the meantime, students at Princeton International School, the state capital of Imphal, staged protests following the discovery of a device there.
