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One dead, 24 hurt in northeast India blasts

Other News Materials 9 March 2008 02:10 (UTC +04:00)

At least one person was killed and 24 others injured, two of them critically, on Saturday in a series of explosions in India's restive northeast blamed on rebel groups, officials said.

Three blasts took place in Assam - the largest of the seven states in the insurgency-wracked region - while a four occurred in neighbouring Manipur.

One person died and six were injured - two of them critically - in a grenade attack by suspected rebels at a crowded market in Dibrugarh, about 480 kilometres (300 miles) east of Assam's main city of Guwahati.

"The grenade exploded close to a roadside tea stall where a large group of people were present," police spokesman B. Baruah told AFP .

Earlier Saturday, 16 people were injured when a bomb strapped to a bicycle exploded near a busy commercial area in the town of Tinsukia, about 520 kilometres from Guwahati, police said.

Two unexploded bombs were recovered from two other markets in Tinsukia, police added.

Meanwhile, two passers-by were injured when a "low intensity bomb" planted under a truck in a market exploded in Guwahati, said a senior police officer who declined to be named.

Police blamed the three blasts on the outlawed United Liberation Front of Asom (ULFA), a rebel group that has been fighting for an independent homeland in Assam since 1979.

ULFA has not commented on the explosions.

In neighbouring Manipur, suspected militants Saturday lobbed a bomb inside the legislative assembly building in the state capital Imphal.

No one was injured, police said. The building suffered only minor damage.

Police blamed militants but said they were unsure which of the 19 groups active in the state that borders Myanmar was responsible. The militant groups' demands range from independence to autonomy.

More than 20,000 people have lost their lives to insurgency in the two states during the past 20 years.

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