Police kill 2 suspected rebels in northeast India

GAUHATI, India (AP) — Police say they have killed two people suspected of belonging to the rebel group accused of killing 29 Muslims in the worst ethnic violence in India's remote northeast in two years.

Police officer Sanjukta Prashar says the suspected insurgents hurled a grenade and fired at policemen who ambushed them in a dense forest on Sunday.

Police killed two in an exchange of gunfire, but the other two managed to escape near Tejpur, a town nearly 80 kilometers (50 miles) north of the region where Muslims were attacked on Thursday and Friday.

Authorities have said the attackers belonged to a faction of the National Democratic Front of Bodoland, which has been fighting for a separate homeland for the ethnic Bodo people for decades. The rebel group denies it.