Imphal:

A team of Manipur Police commandos sent to a border town as reinforcement after a senior police officer was shot dead this morning were ambushed by suspected insurgents on their way, the police said.

Many commandos were injured in the ambush that happened 10 km short of Tengnoupal district.

Troops of the Assam Rifles rushed to the ambush site and rescued the police commandos, government sources said. Many have been taken to hospital.

The India-Myanmar border trading town of Moreh in Tengnoupal, where senior police officer Chingtham Anand was shot dead by a suspected insurgent sniper while he was overseeing the construction of a helipad, is about 115 km from the state capital Imphal.

While the distance is not much on paper for a highway on the plains, the Imphal-Moreh route has many hills, jungles and hairpin bends that significantly raise the risk of ambush by insurgents, sources said.

The Manipur Police sent the commando reinforcements to Moreh after security forces started an operation to neutralise the suspected insurgent sniper who killed the police officer, sources said.

The unprecedented attack on the helipad project this morning and the subsequent ambush marked a sharp increase in hostilities between the security forces and insurgents amid the semblance of hard-won normalcy in ethnic violence-hit Manipur.

A small squad of Manipur Police commandos who have been stationed in Moreh since the May 3 violence is being bolstered with reinforcements now. Sending the Border Security Force (BSF) and police personnel to the border town, however, has not been easy due to roadblocks by miscreants, sources said, adding the need for a larger helipad was felt and so a decision to build it was taken.

The new helipad is being built jointly by the state and the BSF. This will be the third helipad in Moreh. The two other helipads are under the Assam Rifles, whose operational control is with the army.

The state forces and the BSF are making the new helipad for their own exclusive use to transport police and paramilitary jawans to Moreh from other parts of Manipur, since the road to Moreh is blocked by miscreants at many places and there is a high risk of ambush, as had happened today, sources said. The insurgents want to stop the new helipad from being made operational, they said.