Centre concerned over factional violence in Nagaland

New Delhi, Dec 17 (UNI) The Centre is concerned about the rising incidents of factional violence between the Nationalist Socialist Council of Nagaland (Isak-Muivah) and NSCN (Kaplang) factions and and has directed the state government to take stringent measures to check such incidents.

Since the Centre has a ceasefire agreement with both the factions of the NSCN, it has asked the Monitoring Group on ceasefire to keep a keen eye on the situation in the state so that such violent incidents could be controlled, Home Ministry sources told UNI.

Home Minister Shivraj Patil has conveyed the Centre's concern over the violence in the state to the Governor and the Chief Minister of Nagaland recently, and asked him to take effective steps to curb them. The Centre is also willing to sanction additional central forces to curb the violence, but the state government has not yet sought additional forces, they said.

The insurgency affected North Eastern state has witnessed about 282 incidents of factional violence till November 30 this year in which 110 extremists have been killed. About 28 civilians have lost their lives in such incidents and about 99 persons have been kidnapped.

Among the extremists killed in factional violence about 59 were of NSCN (IM) and 41 belonged to NSCN (K) while ten were of the Nagaland National Council. Among the kidnapped, 53 were from NSCN (IM) and 41 from NSCN (K).

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