Terror Attacks in India Leave 57 Dead in 2 Days

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The New York Sun

GAUHATI, India – Terrorists bombed utilities, a tea plantation, and a crowded marketplace in northeastern India yesterday, intensifying violence that has killed 57 people in two days and snarling efforts to bring cease-fires in a region where dozens of ethnic rebel groups are fighting for separate homelands.


At least 17 bombings and shootings were carried out over the weekend in Nagaland and Assam states. The attacks – particularly an explosion Saturday that ripped through a railway station full of commuters – angered even some separatist leaders.


Nearly 40 groups have been fighting in the mountainous region of multiple ethnicities wedged between Bangladesh, Bhutan, and Myanmar. Rebels in Nagaland have been leading one of Asia’s longest running separatist conflicts, dating to shortly before India gained independence from Britain in 1947.


Assam’s top police official blamed the string of attacks on two terrorist groups – the United Liberation Front of Asom and the National Democratic Front of Bodoland.


“The entire string of attacks was a joint operation by the ULFA and the NDFB,” said the inspector-general, Khagen Sarma. Yesterday was the 18th anniversary of the NDFB, which is demanding a homeland for Bodoland, a region that straddles both states.


On Friday, the government offered a cease-fire to the Bodoland rebels, part of their efforts to tame the various groups.


Insurgent groups in India’s northeast are pushing demands ranging from independent homelands to autonomy within the nation. The rebels say they are seeking to protect their ethnic identities, and allege that the federal government has exploited the resources in the mineral and oil-rich region.


The Indian government denies the allegation, and has already signed peace agreements with several groups. In return, the former insurgents have been given jobs and limited administrative control within India.


Some 15,000 people have been killed since Naga rebels began fighting nearly six decades ago. The rebels want special status for Nagaland state, where some 2 million Nagas – most Christians – live in predominantly Hindu India.


But one Naga separatist group engaged in talks with the government denounced the attacks.


“We have set up a special investigating team and have got vital clues as to the identity of those behind the attack on innocent civilians,” said a member of the separatist National Socialist Council of Nagaland, Kraibo Chawang.


He said the assaults were “aimed at derailing and sabotaging our peace talks with the Indian government.”


Nagaland’s death toll stood at 28 yesterday, while Assam’s rose to 29. No arrests had been made in the two states, police said. No immediate claim of responsibility was made.


A bomb exploded late yesterday near a market in Bijni, 125 miles west of Assam state’s capital of Gauhati, leaving three dead. Shortly afterward, another explosion killed another man and left 25 injured in nearby Gauripur along India’s border with Bangladesh.


Insurgents set off a bomb at a tea plantation in nearby Borhat, killing a worker and wounding two others. Also in Borhat, suspected rebels targeted government-run Oil India Ltd.’s natural gas pipeline with a land mine blast.


The extent of damage was not immediately known.


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