10 killed in rebel attack in northeast India

GAUHATI, India (AP) — Separatist militants opened fire with automatic weapons on Muslim villagers in remote northeastern India, killing at least 10 people, including two children, in two attacks, police said Friday. Four people were wounded.

Rebels from one faction of the National Democratic Front of Bodoland were behind the attacks late Thursday, said L.R. Bishnoi, the inspector general of police in the Bodo areas of Assam state.

All the dead were Muslims, he said, and included six women and the two children.

The first attack took place in a village in Baksa district in western Assam, when at least eight rebels opened fire on a group of villagers sitting in a courtyard. Three people were killed and two others wounded, Bishnoi said.

According to eyewitnesses quoted by local television channels, the second attack took place in Kokrajhar district when more than 20 armed men, their faces covered with black hoods, broke open the doors of two homes and sprayed them with bullets, killing seven people.

Mohammed Sheikh Ali, wailed and beat his forehead as he identified the bodies of his dead relatives outside a police station, in footage aired on a local television station.

"Suddenly, I heard people talking and trying to break open the door of our home. The men then opened fire from their guns. I ran to safety, jumping out of the window. When the firing stopped I returned to find my mother, wife and child dead."

Bishnoi said a third attack in the region was averted when police engaged in a gun battle with a group of militants. There were no casualties in that firefight.

The rebel group has been fighting for a separate homeland for the region's ethnic Bodo people. The Bodos are an indigenous tribe in Assam, making up 10 percent of the state's 33 million people.

The same area where Thursday's attacks took place saw fierce clashes between Bodo tribals and Muslim residents in 2012. That weeklong violence left at least 48 people dead.

While Bishnoi gave no reason for Thursday's violence, a Muslim leader said the attacks may have been triggered by comments by a local Bodo lawmaker that local Muslims did not vote for the Bodoland People's Front in recent voting to elect a legislator to the federal Parliament.

Lafikul Islam Ahmed, leader of the All Bodoland Muslim Students' Union, a Muslim youth organization, added that Muslim families were fleeing their homes fearing more attacks. But Bishnoi said there were no such reports.

The attacks come as most parts of India are under heightened security during the country's six-week-long national election. Results of the vote are due May 16.

For most parts of the northeast, sporadic ethnic violence is a fact of life.

Dozens of rebels groups have been fighting the government and sometimes each other for years in the seven states in northeast India. They demand greater regional autonomy or independent homelands for the indigenous groups they represent.

The rebels accuse the federal government of exploiting the region's rich mineral resources but neglecting the local people.

At least 10,000 people, most of them civilians, have been killed in such violence in Assam state alone.