Rebels in Nagaland have been leading one of Asia's longest running separatist
conflicts

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GAUHATI, India - Suspected rebels woke up sleeping villagers in northeastern
India and fired on them with automatic weapons early Monday, killing six and
raising the death toll to 63 from three days of violence in a region where
dozens of ethnic rebel groups are fighting for separate homelands.

Seven people also were wounded when the group of heavily armed militants
descended on Gelapukhuri, a village 130 miles north of Gauhati, the capital of
Assam state, said police officer P. Baruah, who was reached from the region by
telephone. Six of the villagers died, he said.

Baruah blamed the National Democratic Front of Boroland, or NDFB, for the
attack, the latest in a spasm of violence that claimed 57 lives on Saturday and
Sunday, when suspected rebels bombed utilities, a tea plantation and a crowded
marketplace.

Meanwhile, shops and schools were closed and most traffic halted in parts of
Assam state on Monday during a dawn-to-dusk strike called by a students' group
to protest the killings, said A. K. Bhutani, the district magistrate of
Kokrajhar, which was hit by several bomb and gunfire attacks over the weekend.

The All Bodo Students' Union, a tribal student group, called for the general
strike in seven of the state's 27 districts where it commands support.

The group had helped broker a peace accord between the federal government and an
insurgent group, the Bodo Liberation Tigers, in western Assam in 2003.

At least 18 bombings and shootings were carried out in Nagaland and Assam states
since Saturday. The attacks — particularly an explosion Saturday that ripped
through a railway station full of commuters — angered some separatist leaders.

A leader of one separatist group, the United Liberation Front of Asom, or ULFA,
has been quoted as taking responsibility for some of the attacks.

No arrests have been made, police said.

Assam's top police official has blamed all of the attacks on the two militant
groups. "The entire string of attacks was a joint operation by the ULFA and the
NDFB," Inspector-General Khagen Sarma told The Associated Press.

On Sunday, the elusive commander in chief of the outlawed ULFA, Paresh Barua,
claimed responsibility for four of the attacks in Assam state, where the group
has been fighting for a separate homeland since 1979 in an insurgency that has
left more than 10,000 dead in the past decade.

"This is our answer to Assam Chief Minister Tarun Gogoi's cease-fire call," the
English-language newspaper The Sentinel quoted Barua as saying.

Government officials last week offered a cease-fire to both militant groups, and
asked for a response before Oct. 15.

Sunday was the 18th anniversary of the founding of the NDFB, which is demanding
a homeland for Boroland, a region that straddles Nagaland and Assam states.

Nearly 40 separatist groups have been fighting in the mountainous region of
multiple ethnicities wedged between Bangladesh, Bhutan and Myanmar.

Rebels in Nagaland have been leading one of Asia's longest running separatist
conflicts, dating to shortly before India gained independence from Britain in
1947. Some 15,000 people have been killed in the fighting.

But one Naga separatist group engaged in talks with the government denounced the
attacks, and said it was launching its own investigation into the violence.

Kraibo Chawang, of the separatist National Socialist Council of Nagaland, told
the AP that the assaults were "aimed at derailing and sabotaging our peace talks
with the Indian government."

Nagaland's death toll stood at 28, while Assam's rose Monday to 35.