9 injured in IED blast in Meghalaya market

Nine persons, including a woman, were injured when militants triggered an IED blast at a busy market place in Meghalaya's East Garo Hills district on Saturday, police said.

The police have evacuated the area as precautionary measure and an intensive operation was launched to search the market place to detect presence of any other explosive, IGP (Operations) G H P Raju said. The injured have been shifted to a civil hospital, Raju said.

The powerful improvised explosive device (IED) went off at around 12:45 pm at the weekly market destroying portions of a liquor shop and its adjacent rooms and injuring the nine persons, he said.

According to police, proscribed Garo National Liberation Army (GNLA) militants planted the IED in the crowded market targetting civilians. Raju said police will intensify counter insurgency operations in the coming days to flush out GNLA militants from this area.

The GNLA is an outlawed armed militant organisation active in the Garo Hills region since 2010 and is involved in kidnapping, extortion and killing of both civilians and security forces.

While the chairman, a former police officer Champion Sangma, is currently lodged in a jail in the state capital, the operations are being conducted at the command of its founder and self-styled commander-in chief Sohan D Shira.