03 October 2004	Sunday	17 Shaban 1425

GUWAHATI, Oct 2: Separatist militants set off bombs and opened gunfire across India's northeast on Saturday, killing at least 46 people and wounding nearly 100 in one of the bloodiest days in the troubled region.

Two bombs exploded in a marketplace in Dimapur, commercial centre of the state of Nagaland, while a third ripped through a crowded railway station there almost simultaneously, an officer at the local police station said.

Twenty-six people died in the Nagaland attacks, the deadliest since a ceasefire with the main Naga separatist group began seven years ago.

Later on Saturday, heavily armed Bodo tribal guerillas fighting for a separate homeland in the neighbouring state of Assam drove into a town square and gunned down 11 people in a weekly market.

Almost simultaneously guerillas of the United Liberation Front of Assam, the biggest of the insurgent groups in the northeast, set off grenades at four different places in Assam killing eight people. One man had died in a blast earlier on Saturday.

Police said the attacks in Nagaland and Assam appeared to be unrelated, but both took place on a day India was marking the birth anniversary of Mahatma Gandhi.

"We haven't found any linkage yet, but the militants are certainly trying to deliver a message on a day when the Father of the Nation is being remembered," said Assam police inspector general Khagen Sharma.

Federal Home Minister Shivraj Patil was flying to Nagaland on Sunday amid concern that the attacks in the mountainous state could undermine the peace process.

Twelve people died in the attack at Nagaland's main railway station in Dimapur and eight were killed at the market. Six later died in hospital.

"It was a powerful blast, the tin roof of the railway platform has been blown," a railway official said. "There are pieces of flesh and torn human limbs lying on the platform. There are people wailing," Yanger Thakkar, a journalist said.-Reuters