Breakings12 killed, 15 injured in rebel attack in India's Assam state

GAUHATI, India (AP) — At least 12 people were killed and 15
others injured Friday after rebels opened fire in a crowded
market in Assam state in India's remote northeast, officials
said.

Six rebels arrived in a motorized rickshaw and fired automatic
weapons and lobbed grenades in the crowded market in
Balajan, an area just outside the town of Kokrajhar in western
Assam, said top local police official L.R. Bishnoi.

He said that one gunman was killed by security forces and
troops were pursuing five others who fled. Several homes and
shops were badly damaged in the attack.

Police blamed a faction of the National Democratic Front of
Bodoland for the attack. The group has been fighting for an
independent homeland for the region's Bodo tribespeople for
decades. The Bodos are an indigenous tribe in Assam, making
up 10 percent of the state's 33 million people.

Friday's attack was the worst in the recent past, but the group
was blamed for the shooting deaths of more than 60 Muslim
settlers and Adivasi tribespeople in Assam in separate attacks
in 2014.

The rebels have been targeting communities they consider
outsiders, including Adivasis, whose ancestors migrated to
Assam more than 100 years ago to work on tea plantations —
as well as Muslims, accusing them and the federal government
of exploiting the region's wealth while neglecting the locals.

Dozens of rebel groups have been fighting the government and
sometimes each other for years in seven states in northeast
India. They demand greater regional autonomy or independent
homelands for the indigenous groups they represent.

At least 10,000 people, most of them civilians, have been killed
in Assam state alone in the last three decades.