Gunmen kill 13 in market in India’s restive Assam state
The assailants fired indiscriminately and threw hand grenades at the crowded weekly market in Kokrajhar
Attackers wearing military uniforms shot dead at least 13 people and wounded 15 on Friday in a busy market area in a town in India’s restive northeastern state of Assam, in an attack blamed by the authorities on a regional separatist group.
The gunmen fired indiscriminately and threw hand grenades at the crowded weekly market in Kokrajhar, a town 220km by road west of the state’s commercial capital Guwahati, eyewitnesses said.
One assailant was killed and security forces were in pursuit of three or four others hiding in a nearby forest, Assam police chief Mukesh Sahay told reporters.
This attack is intended to destabilise peace in Assam
Sahay said police had recovered an AK-47 rifle and explosives from the dead gunman, as well as a three-wheeler van the assailants had arrived in.
He blamed the outlawed National Democratic Front of Bodoland (Songbijit) group, a militant outfit fighting for a separate homeland for the indigenous Bodo tribespeople. The dead gunman was yet to be identified, said Sahay.
A senior home ministry official in New Delhi said preliminary reports indicated the attack, one of the deadliest in recent years in a region with a history of sectarian and separatist bloodshed, was carried out by the group.