Just as the recent border clashes between the two North-eastern states were coming to rest, fresh tension along the disputed Assam-Mizoram border erupted after some unidentified miscreants detonated a moderate intensity bomb in a government school in Assam on Friday midnight, police said on Saturday.

Police said that the explosion damaged the floor and wall of the Sahebmara Punjee Lower Primary school in the Gutguti area in Hailakandi district adjoining the Kolasib district of Mizoram.  The government-run school is located in the remote bordering area and has been shut due to Covid-19 restrictions.

As the blast took place on Friday at midnight no one was hurt in the detonation. Hailakandi district Superintendent of Police Gaurav Upadhyay, who visited the explosion site, said that they are now probing who is behind the explosion.

Three months back, miscreants carried out powerful blasts damaging Muliwala Lower Primary school located in Katlicherra Block in the same Hailakandi district and in a June explosion, damaged Dholakhal Lower Primary school in Cachar district. Both are government-run schools and the blasts occurred in the nighttime.

Friday night’s incident happened after an over two-week standoff between the two neighbouring states on the inter-state border following the worst-ever violence on the Cachar (Assam)-Kolasib (Mizoram) border on July 26 leaving six Assam Police personnel dead and around 100 civilians and security personnel of the two neighbouring states injured.

Recently, during the latest conflict between the two states, the chief ministers of Assam and Meghalaya had decided to settle their 12 border disputes in a phased manner through talks. Assam’s Himanta Biswa Sarma and his Meghalaya counterpart Conrad K. Sangma said that three separate committees for three disputed regions would be formed on each side under cabinet ministers.

Sarma and Sangma also said that to resolve the inter-state border disputes, they would adopt different kinds of negotiations with new approaches and they would not stick to the old issues and incidents.

The trouble between the states is due to conflicting interpretations of their territorial position. While Mizoram says the boundary line is the one laid down in the Bengal Eastern Frontier Regulation Act of 1875, Assam backs the 1933 demarcation.

…With IANS inputs