GUWAHATI (India), Jan 7: India will rush extra troops to northeast Assam state to enforce a crackdown on an outlawed rebel group blamed for the deaths of 55 people in weekend attacks, officials said on Sunday.

Police blamed the string of attacks -- which started on Friday and targeted Hindi-speaking people -- on militants from the outlawed United Liberation Front of Asom (ULFA), which is fighting for an independent homeland.

“The central government would send adequate reinforcement of paramilitary forces immediately to tackle the situation and ensure security of common people in Assam,” India's junior home minister Sriprakash Jaiswal said.

Federal soldiers in armoured vehicles were already patrolling Assam on Sunday, enforcing a curfew with orders to shoot on sight after the two-day rampage killed 48 people and wounded 30 others. “Security forces have fanned out across the region with the army, police and paramilitary troopers engaged in a systematic anti-insurgency offensive,” district magistrate Absar Hazarika told AFP.

The separate attacks in the eastern districts of Tinsukia, Dibrugarh and Dhemaji targeted Hindi-speaking migrant workers that the militants blame for taking their jobs. Five policemen and two officials were included in the toll of 55 killed after their vehicle hit a landmine. They were returning from conducting local polls in Karbi Anglong district, some 260km from Assam's main city of Guwahati, police said.

The number of extra troopers to be sent to Assam is unclear. But the state government had sought 78 companies or around 7,800 paramilitaries from New Delhi for anti-insurgency operations after the militants targeted minority Hindi-speaking migrants here, a local official said.

Jaiswal met top military commanders, paramilitary police and local officials in eastern Assam where the attacks took place.

An analyst said Hindi speakers were targeted to put pressure on the federal government, which last year suspended a ceasefire, accusing the outlawed ULFA of stepping up attacks on federal soldiers. “Hindi-speaking migrants were targeted, as the outfit wanted to make a violent statement: either you accept our preconditions for talks or such gruesome attacks continue,” former state police chief Hare Krishna Deka said.—AFP