Suspected Black Widow militants gunned down eight construction workers of the Indian Railways at Phaidang under Mahur police station of North Cachar Hill district of Assam at around 2 pm on Sunday as a fresh bout of violence rocked the hill district since Saturday.

The police informed that a group of armed militants suspected to be from Dima Halam Daogah (Jewel Garlosa) or Black Widow opened indiscrimate fire at the construction workers killing eight of them on the spot.

The labourers were engaged by a contractor working in the multi-crore gauge conversion project of the Indian Railways in Lumding-Badarpur Hill Section under Northeast Frontier Railway. The railway project is already under severe threat from the marauding Black Widow militants.

The police and army launched a combing operation in the area following the massacre of the labourers.

A source in the Railways said that such killings by militants would not augur well for the gauge conversion project as well as railway services in Lumding-Badarpur hill section.

The Black Widow militants have posed serious threat to the project.

Incensed by fresh killings of its workers, the NFR might resort to cancellation of passenger train services in Lumding-Badarpur hill section in protest against continuing attacks by the militants and the failure of Assam government to provide adequate security to the contractors and workers engaged in the gauge-conversion project that is vital for expansion of the railway in the hill section of the north-east region.

Sunday's killing could be a retaliation by the DHD-J militants to the killing of 12 of its cadres by the army in the hill district on Saturday.

Three other persons were killed when Black Widow militants attacked a remote railway station in the hill district on Saturday night.