Separatist insurgents gunned down 10 people and wounded five in India's Assam state on Tuesday in a fresh outburst of violence in the restive northeast region, police said. They said five or six militants from the National Democratic Front of Bodoland (NDFB) -- fighting for a separate homeland for Bodo people -- opened fire in a market at Bogribri, more than 200 km (120 miles) west of the region's main city, Guwahati. The latest attack comes after a wave of bomb blasts and shootings in Assam and the neighbouring state of Nagaland which killed 63 people since Saturday. Angry villagers in the area attacked Bodo people they blame for the worst violence in years and burned down at least 50 of their houses late on Monday, police said. Troops carrying automatic weapons patrolled mostly empty streets across seven states in the region as shops, businesses, offices and schools closed in response to a strike call by the North East Students Organisation (NESO). In Guwahati, the commercial hub of the region, the only vehicles on the roads were armoured ones, some of them mounted with light machineguns. "Beyond Calcutta, there is no India for the federal government, it seems," said Samujjal Bhattacharjee, an adviser to the NESO, referring to the eastern Indian city. "The recent violence is a wake-up call to the government to take some initiative for talks in the northeast. Otherwise, there could be further turbulence."
