Separatist rebels shot and killed 11 villagers and wounded 12 others in India's insurgency-wracked northeastern state of Assam, police said Monday.
Seven rebels armed with assault rifles entered two villages in northern Assam's Sonitpur district late Sunday and attacked local villagers, the area police Superintendent Surendra Kumar said by telephone.
The rebels first descended on the village of Dilichan, about 150 miles (240 kilometers) north of Gauhati, Assam's capital, and fired at random before repeating the pattern at the nearby Dimajuli hamlet.
"We suspect rebels of the National Democratic Front of Bodoland or NDFB were behind the massacre to terrorize the people and force them to part with money," Kumar said.
The tribal separatist group has fought for an independent homeland for Bodo tribe members since its inception in 1986. One faction of the group entered into a cease-fire agreement with the government in 2005 but the other part of the group has continued to use violence.
The rebel group has not commented on Sunday's attack.
More than 30 groups in the northeast have fought for decades for independence from India or wide autonomy in the region, about 1,000 miles (1,600 kilometers) east of the capital New Delhi.
The militants say the Indian government exploits the region's rich natural resources while doing little for the indigenous people, most of whom are ethnically closer to those in nearby Myanmar and China than the rest of India.
