1 killed in bombings in northeast India

A string of bombings killed one person and wounded 15 others Sunday in northeastern India's insurgency-ravaged Assam state, police said.

Two of the bombs exploded near markets in the state capital, Gauhati, killing one person and wounded three others, said the state's inspector general of police, R. Chandranathan.

The third bomb, in the eastern district of Tinsukia, wounded 12 people, police said. In that attack, explosives were placed in a car and the driver jumped from the vehicle as it was moving at slow speed, local superintendent of police P.K. Bhuyan said.

The driver then escaped on a motorcycle, he said.

No one immediately claimed responsibility for the attacks, but police said they suspect the United Liberation Front of Asom, or ULFA, a group that has been fighting since 1979 for an independent homeland in the state.

"We believe the ULFA is responsible for these blasts and is trying demonstrate its strike potential ahead of its planned protest day on Tuesday," Chandranathan said.

The ULFA marks Nov. 27, the day when the Indian government outlawed the group in 1990, as a day of protest.

The rebels say Assam's indigenous people — most of whom are ethnically closer to groups in Myanmar and China than to the rest of India — are ignored by the federal government in New Delhi, some 1,000 miles to the west.

They accuse the Indian government of exploiting the northeast's rich natural resources.

On Saturday, a tribal rights rally in Gauhati turned violent, leaving one person dead and more than 200 others wounded, officials said Sunday.

Police had initially put the death toll at six, and no reason was given for the change.

Ethnic Adivasis, who make up the majority of the workers on tea plantations in Assam, were marching to demand the government recognize them as a separate tribal group when the violence flared.