Five people have been killed in two separate incidents in India’s north-eastern state of Manipur, police said on Sunday, in a fresh outbreak of ethnic violence in a region already scarred by years of conflict.
Three men from the Kuki tribal community were killed in an exchange of gunfire in Noney district on Saturday, according to a police statement. Police described the gunmen only as unidentified armed miscreants, and did not say what had prompted the shooting.
The bodies of two other Kuki men, who had gone missing earlier in the week, were recovered in Kangpokpi district on Sunday morning after security forces launched a search operation, a second police statement said.
A leading Kuki tribal body blamed Naga separatist groups for the killings, calling them a direct and unprovoked assault in the victims’ homeland. That attribution is disputed by implication: the police statements themselves did not name any group, and no independent confirmation of who carried out the attacks was available in the initial reporting. Readers should treat responsibility for the killings as unconfirmed.
The deaths came as hundreds of thousands of people joined mass protests in the state capital, Imphal, and elsewhere, demanding an end to a ceasefire arrangement between Kuki armed groups and the Indian state. The protests underline how strained the fragile security arrangements in Manipur have become, with different communities pressing competing demands on New Delhi and the state government.
The Kuki and Naga communities, both predominantly Christian, have a long history of conflict over competing claims to ethnic homelands in the remote border state. The latest fighting erupted after a Naga man was allegedly assaulted by Kuki men in February this year, and escalated after the killing of three Kuki pastors in May, allegedly by Naga armed groups, which triggered a cycle of retaliatory abductions and killings.
The new Kuki-Naga clashes add to a wider crisis in Manipur. The Kuki community is also caught in a separate and bloody ethnic conflict with the mainly Hindu Meitei community that began in May 2023 over economic benefits and job quotas. That conflict has claimed more than 300 lives and left more than 60,000 people displaced, many of whom still live in temporary shelters.
The latest deaths will deepen fears that Manipur’s overlapping conflicts are becoming harder to contain, even as the authorities face pressure from all sides to restore order and address the grievances driving the violence.
Sources: Reuters, “Five killed in fresh ethnic violence in India’s Manipur state”, 1 November 2026, https://www.reuters.com/world/asia-pacific/five-killed-fresh-ethnic-violence-indias-manipur-state-2026-11-01/
