By IRNA
Guwahati, India : Three explosions rocked India’s restive northeastern states of Assam and Manipur Saturday wounding 18, two of them critically, officials said.
A police spokesman said a powerful blast took place at the eastern Assam town of Tinsukia, about 520 km from the state’s main city of Guwahati, wounding 16 people.
“The bomb was concealed in a sack and strapped to a parked bicycle near a busy commercial area. The impact of the blast was powerful and all the the 16 people injured were either shoppers or vendors,” police official A. Das said by telephone from Tinsukia.
The injured were shifted to local hospitals with multiple injuries.
In another explosion in the heart of Guwahati, two pedestrians were wounded and a vehicle damaged.
“A low intensity bomb was planted beneath a parked truck in a market area. The impact was not that powerful and hence the casualties were just two,” a senior police official said.
Police blamed both the blasts on the outlawed United Liberation Front of Asom (ULFA), a rebel group fighting for an independent homeland in Assam since 1979.
The ULFA has not yet claimed responsibility for the explosions.
In yet another blast, suspected militants lobbed a bomb inside the assembly building in Manipur’s state capital Imphal Saturday.
“There were no casualties as the bomb exploded in an area where movement of people was not much. Some partial damage to the building was caused by the blast,” a police official said by telephone from Imphal.
Police are yet to identify the militant group involved in the explosion.
There are more than 19 militant groups active in Manipur, bordering Myanmar, with demands ranging from independence to autonomy.
More than 20,000 people have lost their lives to insurgency in the two states during the past two decades.