(Agencies)
Updated: 2008-03-16 14:22

GAUHATI, India -- Suspected insurgents lobbed a hand grenade at thousands of people participating in a cultural festival Sunday in India's troubled northeast, killing three and wounding another 50, police said.

Nearly 15,000 people belonging to the Mising tribe were participating in the festival when the blast went off, said Diwakar Mishra, the top district administrator.

Fourteen seriously wounded people were taken to a hospital in the nearby town of Dibrugarh, Mishra said.

Police blamed the blast on the United Liberation Front of Asom, a separatist group that has been fighting for an independent homeland in the area for more than two decades.

Mishra said the attack in Jonai, a town 600 kilometers (375 miles) north of Gauhati, the capital of Assam state, came as the rebel group observed its "Army Day," commemorating the date it set up its armed wing in 1981.