Photo Courtesy: Representative Image
Imphal: "Houses reportedly burnt, village bunkers attacked and heavy firing heard; residents question security arrangements and sophisticated ammunition recovered at Tazeikaiphun Village"
The first light of Wednesday brought gunfire to a string of Naga villages along the Noney–Kangpokpi–Senapati belt, with residents reporting armed attacks, houses set ablaze and exchanges of fire at several locations.
Reports received from the ground and corroborated in parts by police information and local reporting indicate that Makui Chamriupiu, Langka, Thanamba, Tazeikaiphun Part 3 and Kapningching Mukti Part 5 were affected by incidents during the early hours of September 23. The scale of damage and the identity of those responsible remain under investigation.
At Tazeikaiphun Part 3, villagers spent the morning defending their settlement after the village bunker came under fire.
According to preliminary police information reported locally, the bunker was attacked at around 5.30 a.m., followed by an exchange of fire between village guards and the attackers that lasted for more than two hours. Assam Rifles personnel and police subsequently reached the area. Police said their preliminary assessment recorded no civilian casualties at the village at that stage.
But behind the official preliminary account is a more unsettled story emerging from the village.
Villagers said the attackers were carrying automatic weapons and that the village guards responded with licensed firearms and ammunition. After the attackers withdrew, residents searched the area and recovered spent cartridges.
Some of those cartridges, villagers said, carried “KF” and “OFV” headstamp markings, which they associated with Indian ordnance manufacturing facilities.
The markings deserve forensic examination. They may provide information about the manufacture of the ammunition, but they do not, on their own, establish who supplied, possessed or fired the cartridges. Determining that would require examination of the ammunition, production information where available, ballistic evidence and, crucially, its chain of custody.
That distinction is particularly important in a conflict environment where competing accounts of responsibility are routinely presented before investigations are completed.
What happened at Tazeikaiphun
Residents told NEWIRE that the attack came after village volunteers reportedly left the settlement following the arrival of Assam Rifles personnel the day before the attack by the Kuki Militants. According to the villagers' account, the Naga Volunteers returned to assist the villagers when the Kuki Militants attacked the village the next morning at around 5.30AM.
NEWIRE has sought to distinguish that allegation from the independently reportable fact that Assam Rifles and police subsequently reached the area after the exchange of fire.
Makui Chamriupiu: residents flee into forests
Further north-west, the Makui (Zeliangrong - Liangmai) Naga Village Authority reported heavy gunfire beginning at approximately 5 a.m. The authority alleged that armed cadres belonging to the KNF(P), KNF(N) and KRA were involved and described the incident as a coordinated attack.
Those allegations have not been independently established.
The authority said houses and other properties were set on fire and that women, children and elderly residents fled into surrounding forest areas for safety. Local reports have put the number of houses damaged or destroyed at approximately 14 to 15, although that figure remains subject to verification.
The Makui Village Authority has demanded stronger security deployment, compensation and rehabilitation for affected families and an investigation into the attacks. It has also raised questions over the continuation of the Suspension of Operations framework with Kuki armed groups. Those demands are statements by the village authority and should not be treated as independent findings concerning responsibility.
Kapningching: houses reduced to ashes
At Kapningching Mukti Part 5, under Nungba Police Station, preliminary reports indicate that another attack took place during the morning. Police information cited by local reporting said three to four houses were set ablaze and reduced to ashes. No civilian casualties were reported in the preliminary assessment available at the time of reporting.
The full extent of the damage remains to be established.
Thanamba and Langka
Thanamba and Langka were also identified among the villages affected by the early-morning violence. The Makui Village Authority's account places heavy firing and attacks across the area at approximately the same time. Independent verification of the precise sequence of events and damage at these two locations remains awaited.
Taken together, the reports point to a geographically connected belt of violence rather than an isolated incident at a single settlement.
The ammunition question
- The spent ammunition recovered at Tazeikaiphun could become one of the most important pieces of physical evidence from the incident.
- The villagers' photographs and video evidences reportedly show cartridges carrying markings identified as KF and OFV.
- Those markings are associated with Indian ammunition manufacturing facilities. But a manufacturer's headstamp answers only part of the question.
- It can potentially help establish where and when ammunition was manufactured.
- It does not establish who subsequently acquired it, who transported it, who fired it or how it reached the battlefield.
The responsibility of journalism is to establish what can be independently demonstrated.
The questions now facing investigators
Wednesday's violence leaves several questions requiring answers:
- Who attacked the villages? The identities and organisational affiliations of the attackers remain to be independently established.
- How many homes were destroyed? Reports from Makui and Kapningching provide preliminary figures, but a physical assessment is required.
- Were civilians injured or killed? Initial police assessments reported no civilian casualties at the Naga village locations, but the situation remains developing and medical and village-level information needs to be reconciled.
- What weapons were used? Villagers described automatic weapons, including AK-pattern rifles and M16/M4-type weapons. These descriptions require forensic confirmation.
- Where did the ammunition come from? The KF and OFV markings reported at Tazeikaiphun warrant examination. Manufacturing provenance is not the same as supply-chain provenance.
- Was there prior warning of the attacks? The Makui Village Authority says authorities had been warned. That claim should be tested against police records, intelligence inputs and communications available before the attacks.
A village road littered with questions
- At Tazeikaiphun, the physical evidence left behind after the firing may ultimately tell a more precise story than the competing narratives now emerging from the conflict.
- Spent cartridges lie at the centre of that evidence.
- So do burned houses, damaged structures, bullet impacts and the testimony of villagers who remained in the settlement during the firing.
- But none of those pieces should be interpreted in isolation.
- The question facing investigators is not simply who fired the weapons.
- It is also how the attackers reached the villages, what happened before the firing began, how they withdrew, what weapons they carried, where the ammunition came from and whether there were failures in the security arrangements that preceded the attacks.
- Those questions cannot be answered conclusively from community allegations alone.
- They require a documented investigation.
NEWIRE Ground Report: What we know and what remains unverified
Reported and partly corroborated:
- Five Naga villages have been identified in reports of the September 23 violence: Makui Chamriupiu, Langka, Thanamba, Tazeikaiphun Part 3 and Kapningching Mukti Part 5.
- Heavy firing was reported around 5 a.m. in the Makui area.
- Tazeikaiphun Part 3's bunker was reportedly attacked around 5:30 a.m.
- An exchange of fire at Tazeikaiphun reportedly continued for more than two hours.
- Assam Rifles and police subsequently reached Tazeikaiphun.
- Three to four houses were reportedly burned at Kapningching Mukti Part 5.
Still requiring independent verification:
- The identities and affiliations of the attackers.
- The reported burning of 14–15 houses at Makui.
- The complete casualty and injury figures.
- The precise weapons used.
- The authenticity and complete identification of the recovered ammunition.
- The chain of custody of the KF/OFV-marked cartridges.
The situation remains fluid.
For the families who spent Wednesday morning fleeing through forests, defending their homes or searching for relatives, the immediate concern is security.
For investigators, the task is harder: to reconstruct what happened before, during and after the firing, using evidence that can withstand scrutiny from every side.
Update as of 4.23PM, 23rd September, 2026
Makui Thebram, a Zeliangrong (Liangmai) Naga village in Kangpokpi district, has reportedly come under attack since around 4:00 p.m., with suspected armed Kuki militants allegedly using sophisticated weapons, according to preliminary ground reports.
NEWIRE will continue to follow the ground situation and distinguish verified information from allegations as further evidence emerges.
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