Rebel attacks in northeast India kill 10

At least 10 people have been killed and four others wounded after armed men with automatic weapons opened fire in India’s northeastern Assam state, local government officials say.

Authorities say the killings took place in two separate incidents late Thursday.

The insurgents opened fire on two homes in Kokrajhar district, killing seven people.

In the Daksa district, the militants killed three people.

Police blamed the attacks on the National Democratic Front of Bodoland (NDFB).

The NDFB wants an independent homeland for the ethnic group to be carved out of Assam. Thursday’s attacks took place in areas populated by non-Bodo people.

Animosity and accusations of land-stealing have long simmered in Assam between members of the ethnic Bodo community and the thousands of mostly Bengali Muslim settlers, many of whom came from the former East Pakistan before it became Bangladesh in 1971.

The incident comes in the middle of India’s ongoing general election, and Muslim groups feel that the community has come under attack because the rebels feel that they had not supported Bodo candidates.

Rakibul Islam of All Bodoland Muslim Students Union said local Muslims had been threatened by Bodo groups “because they thought Muslims had voted for non-Bodo candidates” during elections in Assam on 24 April.

In Kokrajhar, the Bodo heartland, Muslim migrants are regularly attacked by Bodo separatist rebels and this periodically erupts into full-scale riots, says analyst Subir Bhaumik.

More than 100 migrants were killed in one such raid at Bansbari, a makeshift camp for displaced Muslims in 1993.

Source: THE TIMES OF EARTH and agencies