By IANS
Guwahati : At least 14 people were wounded, two of them critically, in a powerful explosion at a crowded marketplace Friday in Guwahati, the main city in India's restive northeastern state of Assam, officials said.
A police spokesman said the bomb was concealed in a sack and kept near a cycle rickshaw stand in a busy commercial area in Guwahati.
"The impact of the blast was so powerful that it ripped apart a small rickshaw repairing shop and injured at least 14 people," a senior police official said requesting not to be named.
Two of the wounded were stated to be critical. The victims were shifted to a local hospital with multiple injuries.
Police blamed the outlawed United Liberation Front of Asom (ULFA), a rebel group fighting for an independent Assamese homeland since 1979, for the blast. Assam was rocked by a string of explosions in the past two weeks. Two people were killed in an explosion in Guwahati Monday.
The ULFA in the past two months staged at least 20 bomb attacks in Assam and launched a fresh attack on Hindi-speaking migrant workers killing 10 such people this week in separate raids.
The ULFA was also blamed for a string of attacks in January that killed about 80 people, 61 of them Hindi-speaking migrant workers.
A massive military offensive was launched against the ULFA after the strikes killing 55 rebels and arresting 553 more cadres since January.