GUWAHATI : Indian soldiers in armoured trucks patrolled streets in northeast Assam on Sunday after 33 Muslims were killed in carnage that police blamed on tribal separatists, as tensions remained high.
Thousands of families have fled their homes after separatists went on the rampage in two districts of the restive tea-growing region, shooting dead Muslims including women and children as they slept.
Police have blamed indigenous Bodo tribesmen for the violence on Thursday and Friday evenings in the region where Muslims have migrated from across the border with impoverished Bangladesh.
Police said the death toll rose overnight Saturday to 33 after a child died of her injuries in a hospital in the state’s main city of Guwahati.
The violence comes during the final stretch of the country’s mammoth general election that has seen religious and ethnic tensions flare and in which Hindu nationalist hardliner Narendra Modi was expected to win.
In 2012, ethnic clashes in the same area claimed about 100 lives and displaced more than 400,000 people.
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