GUWAHATI, Oct 17: Thirty-seven villagers were killed and dozens more wounded in three separate attacks by militants on members of a rival community in the northeastern Indian state of Assam on Monday.

Twenty-two people died at Jirikinding, a village located 320 kilometres east of Assam’s state capital Guwahati, said D.D. Tripathi, administrator of the state’s eastern Karbi Anglong district.

“Two buses were attacked. Passengers of one bus managed to escape while 22 passengers of the other bus were brutally killed using crude weapons and firearms,” he said.

The attacks bring to 58 the number of people killed in factional clashes between the Karbi and Dimasa tribal groups in the region in the past two weeks.

All the victims were from the majority Karbi tribe.

“Preliminary reports indicate the attack was carried out by militants of the Dima Halom Daoga,” Tripathi said.

The outlawed group is fighting for an independent homeland for the Dimasa tribe.

The militants later set fire to both buses while some rebels entered the jungle to look for those passengers who escaped.

“Most of the people killed bore injury marks with sharp weapons like spears and machetes and some of them got bullet wounds as well,” Tripathi said.

In two other attacks, armed Dimasa rebels attacked two villages Monday in the Karbi Anglong district and killed 14 more Karbi villagers.

“The militants went to the two villages and set ablaze some 70 houses and hacked to death 14 villagers, including three children,” a police official said.

Karbi militants later carried out retaliatory attacks on two Dimasa villages, setting ablaze nearly 100 homes, but no details of casualties were available from the remote area.

“The villages where the retaliatory strikes took place are very remote and we are yet to get any more details from the spot,” Tripathi said.—AFP