The ultras had also looted nine self-loading rifles (SLR), on eight machine gun, besides huge quantities of magazines and ammunition from the slain jawans.

A senior police official said this morning that the BSF's Tripura, Cachar and Mizoram Frontier Inspector General B C Goel, Deputy Inspector General of Tripura Police K Nagraj and Dhalai's Superintendent of Police Nepal Das were supervising the manhunt. The BSF has also been asked to seal the border with Bangladesh by deploying additional BSF personnel to prevent the guerillas from crossing the Indo-Bangla border, he added.

A tribal youth, suspected to be a collaborator, was detained in connection with this killing. Yesterday's incident was the biggest strike by the outlawed militants this year and the third militant attack during the current months.In the other two major attacks, the rebels killed four Assam Rifles jawans and their civilian driver and abducted 17 Government officials from South and Dhalai districts respectively.

The rebels released one of the 17 hostages and demanded Rs one crore for the release of the others. Meanwhile, yesterday's ambush was the second major attack on the BSF by the militants in Tripura. Earlier, on October 26, 1997, seven BSF jawans and twelve civilian tribal labourers were killed by the NLFT at Raishabari just along the Indo-Bangla border in South Tripura district.

Yesterday, 12 BSF personnel were moving in two vehicles on the Chawmanu-Thalchara border road as part of their routine border patrolling. when the heavily armed guerillas threw grenades and sprayed bullets from two sides of a hilltop, killing all the eight jawans of the second vehicle on the spot. The jawans travelling in the first vehicle could not retaliate the attack as they were moving at a distance from the second vehicle.

The police officialsaid the NLFT militants had planned to procure sophisticated arms by attacking security personnel and collecting huge ransom through abduction of people, including Government officials.

Condemning yesterday's incident, Chief Minister Manik Sarkar said the militants hatched a clandestine plan to disturb peace and tranquility before the October 3 LS election in the State.

The CM asked the security forces and the administration to intensify anti-insurgency operation to flush out the militants. He reiterated his appeal to the people to cooperate with the administration to curb militancy in the state and urged the centre to send additional paramilitary forces to to strengthen the ongoing counter-insurgency operations.