Jan. 11: Four CPM supporters were killed when alleged Trinamul Congress activists ambushed them in South 24-Parganas’ Canning this afternoon after a row over a madrasah managing committee’s elections.

A CPM group was appar-ently walking home through a Trinamul-dominated pocket after party-backed candidates had filed their nominations for the poll to pick guardians’ on the committee when they were attacked. Bombs were hurled and shots fired.

Police said a clash en-sued at Makaltala, 5km from Canning town and about 35km from Calcutta, with both sides firing and hurling bombs at each other.

The CPM has called a 12-hour bandh in the district on Wednesday to protest the killings. Several areas on the fringes of Calcutta are likely to be affected, though some with Trinamul dominance are likely to be spared.

In the morning, a group of Trinamul-backed guardian’s representatives filed their nominations at Ghutiarisharif Abu Zafaria Senior High Madrasah. The CPM backed candidates arrived in the afternoon amid allegations that their rivals were trying to dissuade them from contesting.

The area of South 24-Parganas where the clash took place is one the CPM is holding onto in a district swamped by Trinamul-run rural bodies.

Narayanpur gram panchayat, under which Makaltala falls, and its nearby rural bodies are still the Left’s. The local MLA is the CPM’s — land minister Abdur Rezzak Mollah — and the madrasah managing committee has been under the party’s control for 30 years.

But Trinamul has been making inroads into the area since snatching the zilla parishad from the Left in 2008. The pocket of Narayanpur where the clash took place is among those where Mamata Banerjee’s party has grown in strength. The Trinamul-backed SUCI candidate was elected MP from the area last May.

Eleven CPM supporters took bullets and bomb splinters today. The dead were identified as Dinesh Haldar, Biswanath Gayen, Khairul Zamadar and Selim Zamadar, all aged between 28 and 35.

The seven others have been brought to MR Bangur Hospital in Calcutta this evening.

Hospital sources said tonight that bullets had been extracted from six. The seventh person, who has a bullet in his abdomen, was in the operation theatre till late tonight.

Local Trinamul leaders said five of their supporters were also injured. However, police did not confirm the claim.