By IANS
Guwahati : At least 12 people, including two paramilitary troopers, were wounded Sunday in a powerful explosion at a busy marketplace in Assam's main city of Guwahati.
A police spokesman said the blast took place near a temple in the Fancy Bazar area in Guwahati. "The bomb was kept on a parked motorcycle. Two of the injured were paramilitary troopers of the Central Reserve Police Force who were on a routine patrol in the area," Rajen Singh, additional police chief of Guwahati city, told IANS.
Doctors at the Guwahati Medical College said 12 people were brought to the hospital with multiple injuries. "Most of the victims had splinter wounds," a doctor said.
Police blamed the blast on the outlawed United Liberation Front of Asom (ULFA), a rebel group fighting for an independent Assamese homeland since 1979.
"This is the handiwork of the ULFA," Singh said.
This is the third blast in Assam in the past four days – eight people were injured Friday in a car bomb explosion in eastern Assam, while two people were critically wounded in a blast at a warehouse in Guwahati city Thursday.
The ULFA in the past two months staged at least a dozen bomb attacks in Assam.
The ULFA was also blamed for a string of attacks in January that killed about 80 people, 61 of them Hindi-speaking migrant workers in eastern Assam. A home ministry report released earlier this week said 99 civilians were killed by the ULFA in 156 incidents in Assam from January to March 31.