Travel  |  Business World  |  Women's World  |  Entertainment

Change Your Life!

Five woodcutters killed in Assam as gunmen strike in India

News
Sports
Chat
Travel
Dhaka Today
Yellow Pages
Higher Education
Ask a Doctor
Weather
Currency Rate
Horoscope
E-Cards
B2K Poll
Comment on the Site
B2K Club

January 24, 2001 

GAUHATI-- (AP) - Twenty masked gunmen burst into a house where migrant timber cutters were sleeping in northeastern Assam, killing five in indiscriminate automatic weapons fire and wounding two, police said Tuesday.

There was no claim of responsibility for the late Monday night attack and police said they did not know the identity of the gunmen, but blamed it on guerrillas fighting to separate Assam from India.

Militants carry out frequent attacks on migrant laborers, traders and plantation managers who are non-Assamese. In the last three months of 2000, such attacks killed 109 non-Assamese.

Monday night's attack in the village of Sankuchi, 140 kilometers (85 miles) west of the state capital, Gauhati, was the first this year.

Police speculated that it was part of the militants' buildup to India's Republic Day, celebrated on Friday. Militant groups in all seven northeastern states oppose celebration of the day and have warned people not to participate.

Increased violent attacks are usually carried out in the week or two before Republic Day, Jan. 26, and before Independence Day, Aug. 15.

On Monday, soldiers said they averted a major train disaster in eastern Assam's Sivasagar district by defusing a 12-kilogram (25-pound) sophisticated explosive planted on a railway track.

At least 50,000 army, police, and paramilitary soldiers have taken up positions in the seven insurgency-wracked northeastern states and are on high alert for Republic Day violence.