GAUHATI, India Police shot at violent mobs in northeastern India, killing 14 people and raising the death toll from three days of ethnic clashes to at least 30, officials said Sunday. About 25,000 villagers have fled their homes, they said.

Authorities imposed an indefinite curfew Friday in the northern districts of Assam state when clashes erupted between members of the ethnic Bodo group and Muslim settlers. State officials authorized police to shoot anyone fighting in the streets.

On Sunday, police shot into a mob that was setting huts on fire in Dhola village in Darrang district, 50 miles north of the state capital of Gauhati, state official Rajib Bora said. He said four people were killed. The situation is tense, Bora said.

Police also fired twice on violent groups Friday, killing at least 10 people, state Home Secretary Subhash Das said. He said at least 16 other people had died in the ethnic violence.

The fighting began Friday when a group of young Bodo men were attacked after they finished patrolling their villages. Bodo leaders blamed the incident on relatively recent settlers, most of whom are Muslims, sparking several days of clashes, Bora said.

The two sides have fought with bows and arrows and spears and machetes, and have burned each others homes and property. More than 50 people have been injured, and whole villages have fled the fighting, with an estimated 25,000 people displaced, Das said.

The picture is hazy and compilation of casualty figures has become difficult because of the continuing arson, said state government spokesman Himanta Biswa Sarma. We are mobilizing all resources to control the situation.

Animosity between the Bodos and Muslim migrants stems from long-standing land disputes in the region. The groups clashed sporadically throughout the 1990s, leaving at least 250 dead and an estimated 300,000 displaced. Nearly 100,000 people are still living in makeshift relief camps.