India boosts patrols after 33 killed
Indian soldiers in armored trucks patrolled streets in northeast Assam on Sunday after 33 Muslims were killed in carnage that police blamed on tribal separatists.
Thousands of families have fled their homes after separatists went on the rampage in two districts of the restive tea-growing region, shooting Muslims, including women and children, as they slept.
The violence comes during the final stretch of India's mammoth general election, which has seen religious and ethnic tensions flare, and which Hindu nationalist hard-liner Narendra Modi is expected to win.
Police have blamed indigenous Bodo tribesmen for the violence on Thursday and Friday evenings in the region where Muslims have migrated from across the border with impoverished Bangladesh.
Police said the death toll rose overnight Saturday to 33 after a child died of her injuries in a hospital in the state's main city of Guwahati.
Assam Chief Minister Tarun Gogoi said those responsible would be punished, as security forces, including federal soldiers, fanned out across Baksa and neighboring Kokrajhar district to prevent further clashes.
"We are taking stern measures and have so far arrested more than 30 people," Gogoi said.
The victims were Muslim migrants whose community has been locked in staggered land disputes with Bodos in the remote state that borders Bhutan and Bangladesh.
According to local media, Bodos targeted Muslims as punishment for failing to support their candidate at the multiphased election, but this could not be confirmed. Voting in Assam ended on April 24.
Modi, from the Bharatiya Janata Party, said last week that illegal immigrants from Bangladesh should pack their bags if he wins the election and becomes India's next prime minister. The results of the polls will be announced on May 16.
On Sunday, Muslims in Baksa were refusing to bury 18 of those killed, in a protest against authorities, whom they blame for failing to protect them.
"Right now we are sitting in the open with 18 bodies in front of us," said Lafiqul Islam, president of the All Bengali Muslim Students Union.
"We will continue with our protest and not perform the funeral until and unless the chief minister personally visits the spot," he told AFP in Narayanguri, a village 210 kilometers west of Guwahati.
Police blamed the attacks on the outlawed National Democratic Front of Bodoland, which has been demanding a separate homeland for decades, but the group has denied it was behind the violence.
On Saturday, Omar Abdullah, the chief minister of India-controlled Kasmir, blamed Modi for inciting the attacks.
AFP-Xinhua
(China Daily 05/05/2014 page11)
