Five die, 50 hurt in rebel blasts in India's Assam

Separatist militants in India's troubled northeastern state of Assam killed five people and wounded at least 50 in bombings, police said yesterday.

Intelligence officers blamed the blasts on the United Liberation Front of Asom (ULFA), which had claimed responsibility for an earlier blast that killed 22 people at a ceremony to mark India's independence day this month.

ULFA has been fighting for Assam's independence since the late 1970s.

"Militant activities are definitely on the rise and the situation has turned for the worse," Khogen Sharma, the state's Inspector General of Police, told Reuters by phone.

Police said ULFA militants threw a grenade outside a crowded cinema on Wednesday night in Dibrugarh, the biggest town in eastern Assam, killing one and wounding seven people.

Anxious relatives congregated in the town's poorly equipped main hospital as the injured underwent operations to remove shrapnel from their legs and bodies.

"Please pray that my husband survives," said Munni Devi, weeping and in a state of shock with her crying daughter by her side.

"I've given my blood to save my husband. If he dies I have nothing."

The ULFA had called for a boycott of Indian movies and there have been several attacks on cinemas in the past.

Two soldiers and a daughter of one of them were killed when the vehicle in which they were travelling hit a crude landmine at Goalpara, 100 km west of Guwahati, Assam's main city.

Six soldiers were wounded in the blast.

One person was killed and at least 37 wounded when a time bomb exploded in Gossaigaon town, west of Guwahati.

Another bomb exploded on a railway track late on Wednesday but no one was hurt, police said.

About 10,000 people have been killed in 25 years of insurgency in Assam, an oil- and tea-producing state that the rebels say is exploited and neglected by the central government.

The separatist rebels claimed responsibility for a bomb attack on August 15 in Dhemaji town in which 22 people were killed, including about a dozen children.