Five people are killed in two separate incidents in Manipur, police say, as fresh ethnic violence erupts in the conflict-hit northeastern state. Three men from the Kuki tribal group are killed in an exchange of gunfire involving unidentified armed miscreants in Noney district, according to a police statement.
The bodies of two other men from the same community, who had gone missing earlier in the week, are recovered in Kangpokpi district after security personnel launch a search operation, a second police statement says. A top Kuki tribal body blames Naga separatist outfits for the killings, describing them as a direct and unprovoked assault in their homeland. That attribution remains a claim by the tribal body and has not been independently verified in the police statements reported so far.
A long-running dispute over homelands
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 follows an alleged assault on a Naga man by men from the Kuki community in February, according to reports.
The killing of three Kuki pastors in May, allegedly by Naga armed groups, is reported to have triggered a series of retaliatory abductions and killings by both sides.
Protests and a wider conflict backdrop
The killings come 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 protests underline how security arrangements themselves have become a point of contention, with different communities reading the same ceasefire in very different ways.
The Kuki-Naga clashes add 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 that conflict, which has claimed more than 300 lives, continue to live in temporary shelters, according to reports.
What needs to happen next
The immediate question is whether security operations can prevent retaliation and break the cycle of killing and counter-killing.
Security operations across the Northeast continue to shape the region’s fragile peace. Enforcement agencies recently seized 50 kg of methamphetamine in twin operations in Assam and Mizoram, while sport offers a rare shared stage, with an Arunachal cricketer scoring 160 against Manipur in the Ranji Trophy. In Manipur itself, the urgent task remains the same: stopping the next killing before it happens.
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