Three critically injured people died overnight in hospitals, raising the death toll to 10 from three explosive attacks that hit India’s restive northeastern state of Assam, police said yesterday.
Another 59 people were injured in coordinated attacks on Monday, a day before an election campaign visit to the state by India’s prime minister, said Bhaskar Mahanta, an inspector-general of state police.
A spokeswoman for Singh’s office, Deepak Sandhu, said the prime minister’s trip, planned for later yesterday, had not been canceled.
PHOTO: AP
G.M. Srivastava, the state’s top police officer, blamed separatist United Liberation Front of Asom (ULFA) for Monday’s explosions on the eve of the 30th anniversary of its founding. The ULFA has been linked to many acts of terrorism in Assam state and usually stages attacks around this time of year.
The ULFA wants an independent state for ethnic Assamese and is the largest among dozens of militant groups in the region.
“This is a coordinated attack” by the group, Srivastava told reporters.
The head of Assam state said yesterday it was difficult to act against the insurgents as many of them operated from bases in neighboring Bangladesh and Myanmar.
“The Indian Government has taken up the matter with the new government in Bangladesh as well as the military leadership in Myanmar,” state Chief Minister Tarun Gogoi said.
India accuses Bangladesh of giving refuge to militants who are fighting separatist wars in its northeast. Bangladesh denies the charge.
On Monday, the first bomb was likely tied to a motorbike and exploded in a crowded market in the state capital, Gauhati, killing seven people and wounding at least 56, Srivastava said.
The blast left several cars on fire amid piles of smoldering wreckage.
Hours later, a second bomb, this one tied to a bicycle, went off in a market in the town of Dhekiajuli, 210km north of Gauhati, Srivastava said. At least four people were wounded, he said.
Later in the day, suspected militants threw a grenade at a police station in the town of Mankachar on the India-Bangladesh border, local police official Bhartha Mahanta said. Two police officers were injured, one of them critically, Mahanta said.
Srivastava said police had recently received information that the front had been planning a major attack in Gauhati.
The separatists accuse the government of exploiting the area’s natural resources while doing little for the indigenous people — most of whom are ethnically closer to peoples in Myanmar and China than to the rest of India.
More than 10,000 people have died in separatist violence over the past decade.
In related news, an irate journalist threw a shoe at India’s home minister yesterday in an echo of the attack on then-US president George W. Bush in a press conference in Iraq last December.
P. Chidambaram ducked as the trainer flew past him, but remained calm and smiled broadly as the man was escorted out of the event in New Delhi.
The Sikh journalist was angered by the minister’s response to a question related to the alleged involvement of ruling Congress party officials in 1984 anti-Sikh riots that left thousands dead.
North Korean leader Kim Jong-un sent Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) greetings with what appeared to be restrained rhetoric that comes as Pyongyang moves closer to Russia and depends less on its long-time Asian ally. Kim wished “the Chinese people greater success in building a modern socialist country,” in a reply message to Xi for his congratulations on North Korea’s birthday, the state-run Korean Central News Agency reported yesterday. The 190-word dispatch had little of the florid language that had been a staple of their correspondence, which has declined significantly this year, an analysis by Seoul-based specialist service NK Pro showed. It said
On an island of windswept tundra in the Bering Sea, hundreds of miles from mainland Alaska, a resident sitting outside their home saw — well, did they see it? They were pretty sure they saw it — a rat. The purported sighting would not have gotten attention in many places around the world, but it caused a stir on Saint Paul Island, which is part of the Pribilof Islands, a birding haven sometimes called the “Galapagos of the north” for its diversity of life. That is because rats that stow away on vessels can quickly populate and overrun remote islands, devastating bird
‘CLOSER TO THE END’: The Ukrainian leader said in an interview that only from a ‘strong position’ can Ukraine push Russian President Vladimir Putin ‘to stop the war’ Decisive actions by the US now could hasten the end of the Russian war against Ukraine next year, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said on Monday after telling ABC News that his nation was “closer to the end of the war.” “Now, at the end of the year, we have a real opportunity to strengthen cooperation between Ukraine and the United States,” Zelenskiy said in a post on Telegram after meeting with a bipartisan delegation from the US Congress. “Decisive action now could hasten the just end of Russian aggression against Ukraine next year,” he wrote. Zelenskiy is in the US for the UN
A 64-year-old US woman took her own life inside a controversial suicide capsule at a Swiss woodland retreat, with Swiss police on Tuesday saying several people had been arrested. The space-age looking Sarco capsule, which fills with nitrogen and causes death by hypoxia, was used on Monday outside a village near the German border. The portable human-sized pod, self-operated by a button inside, has raised a host of legal and ethical questions in Switzerland. Active euthanasia is banned in the country, but assisted dying has been legal for decades. On the same day it was used, Swiss Department of Home