ASSAM – Eleven Muslim villagers were killed and others wounded overnight when suspected separatist militants opened fire on them in the high tense northeastern Indian state of Assam.
"The first attack took place in a village in Baksa in western Assam where the rebels killed three people," LR Bishnoi, a senior police official in Kokrajhar told the BBC on Friday, May 2.
“The second incident happened in Kokrajhar where the rebels gunned down seven people.”
The police official was referring to an incident in which the militants shot dead three members of a family, including two women, while wounding a baby in the Kokrajhar district of Assam state.
In a second attack in Baksa district in western Assam, eight people were killed by a group of guerrillas as their sat in courtyard on Thursday night.
After the deadly attacks, police reinforcements were sent to the two districts where the attacks took place, which have a history of sectarian violence.
Dozens of police in military style uniforms and armed with automatic rifles patrolled the area, television pictures showed.
Police said they suspected the militants behind the overnight killings were members of the Bodo tribe.
Bodo people have frequently attacked Muslims they say have illegally entered from neighboring Bangladesh and encroached on their ancestral lands in the hills.
Police blamed the attacks on the National Democratic Front of Bodoland (NDFB).
"The authorities will take firm action against those involved in this crime," said state government spokesman Nilamoni Sen Deka.
Election Battles
The incident comes in the middle of India's ongoing general election battle.
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, Islam told BBC.
Surrounded by China, Myanmar, Bangladesh and Bhutan, Assam is home to more than 200 ethnic and tribal groups and has been racked by separatist revolts since India's independence from Britain in 1947.
In recent years, Hindu and Christian tribes have vented strong sentiments against Muslims, calling them Bangladeshi immigrants.
In August 2012, sectarian violence rocked the city after four youths were killed by unidentified men in the isolated Kokrajhar district.
In retaliation, armed men from Bodo tribes attacked Muslims for suspicion of being behind the killings.
The violence spread to the neighboring Chirang and Dhubri districts, leaving at least 22 people dead.
Thousands of people were also left homeless as their villages were set on fire in the violence.
source : islamonline.com
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