New Delhi: Kuki militants fatally shot a truck driver and injured a constable as they ambushed their convoy in the tense Litan area of Manipur’s Ukhrul yesterday, the state police said early on Saturday (May 30).It identified the deceased as 57-year-old Nitish Kumar, a native of Hooghly in West Bengal who was working as a truck driver for the Food Corporation of India, and the injured constable as attached with the Litan police station.Personnel of the state police, the Central Reserve Police Force, the Border Security Force and the Rapid Action Force were escorting stranded Food Corporation and LPG trucks on Friday when the convoy “came under heavy attack” by “armed Kuki militants who had taken tactical positions” near the hilly T.M. Kasom village in Ukhrul, the police said.“Security forces have launched search operations and area domination at the area to nab the perpetrators,” it added.Prior to the ambush that took place late Friday morning, media reports say the convoy was blocked by protesters at the Shangkai village downhill from T.M. Kasom, after which security personnel fired tear gas shells to disperse the crowd and proceeded up National Highway 202.Per The Hindu, Kuki organisations alleged that security forces used excessive force against civilians while Naga outfits accused Kuki “terrorists” of firing at villagers.Manipur chief minister Y. Khemchand Singh condemned Friday’s ambush in a statement. “Such senseless acts of violence are unacceptable and will not be tolerated,” he wrote on X.He said on Saturday afternoon that he met representatives of the All Manipur Road Transport Drivers and Motor Workers Union as well as Kumar’s family members and assured the latter that the “safety, security and welfare of truck drivers and transport workers remain a top priority of the government”.Today hundreds of truckers suspended services along the Imphal-Jiribam highway – which goes onwards to Assam’s Cachar valley – in protest against Kumar’s killing and to demand greater safety along the fractured state’s highways, India Today NE reported.Kumar was shot in the same Litan area where two Naga civilians and a Border Security Force jawan were killed by suspected militants on April 18 and April 11 respectively.Litan has been tense since a scuffle between members of the Kuki and Naga communities in February escalated into ethnic tension and violence, including the burning of homes belonging to both sides. Last month The Hindu cited a district official as saying that the authorities started providing security cover to civilian vehicles moving in the area in light of occasional violence between the two communities.The situation deteriorated after three church leaders of the Thadou community – which some say is part of the broader Kuki-Zo community, a notion that others still deny – were gunned down in an ambush in Kangpokpi district, after which a Naga man was in turn killed in Noney.Kuki and Naga groups then took members from each other’s community hostage, and although they subsequently released a number of captives, the two sides say that 14 and six people from their respective sides remain missing.These tensions occur alongside the strife between Manipur’s Meitei and Kuki communities, which continues simmering and sporadically escalates into violence over three years after erupting on May 3, 2023. The crisis has physically cleaved the two communities apart and they are virtually segregated from each other by ‘buffer zones’ patrolled by security forces.