Three critically injured people died overnight in hospitals, raising the death toll to 10 from three explosive attacks that hit India’s restive northeastern state of Assam, police said yesterday.
Another 59 people were injured in coordinated attacks on Monday, a day before an election campaign visit to the state by India’s prime minister, said Bhaskar Mahanta, an inspector-general of state police.
A spokeswoman for Singh’s office, Deepak Sandhu, said the prime minister’s trip, planned for later yesterday, had not been canceled.
PHOTO: AP
G.M. Srivastava, the state’s top police officer, blamed separatist United Liberation Front of Asom (ULFA) for Monday’s explosions on the eve of the 30th anniversary of its founding. The ULFA has been linked to many acts of terrorism in Assam state and usually stages attacks around this time of year.
The ULFA wants an independent state for ethnic Assamese and is the largest among dozens of militant groups in the region.
“This is a coordinated attack” by the group, Srivastava told reporters.
The head of Assam state said yesterday it was difficult to act against the insurgents as many of them operated from bases in neighboring Bangladesh and Myanmar.
“The Indian Government has taken up the matter with the new government in Bangladesh as well as the military leadership in Myanmar,” state Chief Minister Tarun Gogoi said.
India accuses Bangladesh of giving refuge to militants who are fighting separatist wars in its northeast. Bangladesh denies the charge.
On Monday, the first bomb was likely tied to a motorbike and exploded in a crowded market in the state capital, Gauhati, killing seven people and wounding at least 56, Srivastava said.
The blast left several cars on fire amid piles of smoldering wreckage.
Hours later, a second bomb, this one tied to a bicycle, went off in a market in the town of Dhekiajuli, 210km north of Gauhati, Srivastava said. At least four people were wounded, he said.
Later in the day, suspected militants threw a grenade at a police station in the town of Mankachar on the India-Bangladesh border, local police official Bhartha Mahanta said. Two police officers were injured, one of them critically, Mahanta said.
Srivastava said police had recently received information that the front had been planning a major attack in Gauhati.
The separatists accuse the government of exploiting the area’s natural resources while doing little for the indigenous people — most of whom are ethnically closer to peoples in Myanmar and China than to the rest of India.
More than 10,000 people have died in separatist violence over the past decade.
In related news, an irate journalist threw a shoe at India’s home minister yesterday in an echo of the attack on then-US president George W. Bush in a press conference in Iraq last December.
P. Chidambaram ducked as the trainer flew past him, but remained calm and smiled broadly as the man was escorted out of the event in New Delhi.
The Sikh journalist was angered by the minister’s response to a question related to the alleged involvement of ruling Congress party officials in 1984 anti-Sikh riots that left thousands dead.
Republican US lawmakers on Friday criticized US President Joe Biden’s administration after sanctioned Chinese telecoms equipment giant Huawei unveiled a laptop this week powered by an Intel artificial intelligence (AI) chip. The US placed Huawei on a trade restriction list in 2019 for contravening Iran sanctions, part of a broader effort to hobble Beijing’s technological advances. Placement on the list means the company’s suppliers have to seek a special, difficult-to-obtain license before shipping to it. One such license, issued by then-US president Donald Trump’s administration, has allowed Intel to ship central processors to Huawei for use in laptops since 2020. China hardliners
A top Vietnamese property tycoon was on Thursday sentenced to death in one of the biggest corruption cases in history, with an estimated US$27 billion in damages. A panel of three hand-picked jurors and two judges rejected all defense arguments by Truong My Lan, chair of major developer Van Thinh Phat, who was found guilty of swindling cash from Saigon Commercial Bank (SCB) over a decade. “The defendant’s actions ... eroded people’s trust in the leadership of the [Communist] Party and state,” read the verdict at the trial in Ho Chi Minh City. After the five-week trial, 85 others were also sentenced on
‘DELUSIONAL’: Targeting the families of Hamas’ leaders would not push the group to change its position or to give up its demands for Palestinians, Ismail Haniyeh said Israeli aircraft on Wednesday killed three sons of Hamas’ top political leader in the Gaza Strip, striking high-stakes targets at a time when Israel is holding delicate ceasefire negotiations with the militant group. Hamas said four of the leader’s grandchildren were also killed. Ismail Haniyeh’s sons are among the highest-profile figures to be killed in the war so far. Israel said they were Hamas operatives, and Haniyeh accused Israel of acting in “the spirit of revenge and murder.” The deaths threatened to strain the internationally mediated ceasefire talks, which appeared to gain steam in recent days even as the sides remain far
RAMPAGE: A Palestinian man was left dead after dozens of Israeli settlers searching for a missing 14-year-old boy stormed a village in the Israeli-occupied West Bank US President Joe Biden on Friday said he expected Iran to attack Israel “sooner, rather than later” and warned Tehran not to proceed. Asked by reporters about his message to Iran, Biden simply said: “Don’t,” underscoring Washington’s commitment to defend Israel. “We are devoted to the defense of Israel. We will support Israel. We will help defend Israel and Iran will not succeed,” he said. Biden said he would not divulge secure information, but said his expectation was that an attack could come “sooner, rather than later.” Israel braced on Friday for an attack by Iran or its proxies as warnings grew of