Violence kills 23 in Assam in two days
Tribal separatists killed at least 12 Muslims in India's remote northeastern state of Assam yesterday, taking the toll to 23 following two days of deadly carnage, police said.
"Some 10 heavily armed militants went on a rampage, torching about 20 houses and killing at least 12 people," police inspector general S N Singh told AFP.
The attack was reported in Narayanguri village in Baksa district, some 200 kilometres west of Assam's main city of Guwahati.
On Thursday night rebels had killed three villagers in the same district and eight more in neighbouring Kokrajhar, opening fire on the victims as they slept in their homes.
The attacks prompted security forces to launch a massive hunt for the guerillas.
An indefinite curfew has also been imposed in the violence-torn districts, with shoot-at-sight orders given to police, Singh said.
The victims of the attacks were Muslim migrants who have been locked in staggered land disputes with indigenous Bodo tribes in the tea-growing state that borders Bhutan and Bangladesh.
Police blamed the attacks on the outlawed National Democratic Front of Bodoland (NDFB), which has been demanding a separate homeland for decades.
Seventeen people were killed in clashes in the same region in January and thousands of others fled their homes for fear of further attacks. In 2012, ethnic clashes in the same area claimed about 100 lives and displaced more than 400,000 people.
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