Rebels Slay Eight Members of Family in India Region

Tribal separatists in northeastern Tripura state killed eight members of a Bengali immigrant family in a nighttime massacre that brought to 23 the number of lives taken by the rebels this week, news reports said Friday.

In response to the latest in an apparent upsurge in attacks by the Tripura National Volunteers, or TNV, the state’s leftist government ordered army troops to stage a show-of-force “flag march” in a district of the state to defuse tensions and asked for reinforcements.

The Press Trust of India, in a dispatch from the state capital of Agartala, quoted Chief Minister Nripen Chakraborty as saying that 15 rebels were involved in Thursday night’s raid on the village of Kachnichayi-Debbari.

Hacked at Victims

He told the news agency that the rebels burst into the home of a family of Bengali settlers and opened fire. They then hacked at the victims with bayonets and takkals, machetes used for clearing jungle, Chakraborty said.

Eight members of the family--including three women and three children--died in the attack, the Press Trust said.

It quoted Chakraborty as saying the assailants set the family’s house afire and tossed into the flames the bodies of the victims and those of some livestock. The assailants then fled from the village, located some 70 miles northeast of Agartala, it said.

Chakraborty said a company of troops staged a “flag march” in the Amarpur subdivision, in southern Tripura, in a bid to ease tensions fired by the slayings in a village in the area Monday night of 11 Bengali settlers.