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Four migrant workers killed by militants in Assam

By IANS,

Guwahati : Four Hindi speaking migrant workers – all members of the same family – were killed by suspected tribal separatists in Assam Tuesday, police said.

A police spokesperson said a group of heavily armed militants suspected to be from the outlawed National Democratic Front of Bodoland (NDFB) attacked Rangapara village in Sonitpur district, about 220 km north of Assam’s main city of Guwahati, before dawn Tuesday.

“The militants entered the house of a Hindi speaking businessman, broke open the door and started firing indiscriminately, killing four members of the family on the spot,” a police official said.

The dead include the husband and wife, their teenaged son and a male relative. The family hailed from Bihar.

“We suspect the NDFB was behind the attack, although we don’t know the immediate provocation for the killings,” the official said.

The incident has already led to panic among other Hindi-speaking people in the area with most of them either daily wage earners or doing petty business.

“Security has been beefed up in the area,” the police official said.

More than 200 Hindi speaking migrant workers have been killed in Assam since 2000 by various militant groups in a series of well-planned attacks, with rebel groups like the outlawed United Liberation Front of Asom (ULFA) and the NDFB vowing to free the state of all “non-Assamese migrant workers”.

More than 10,000 people have lost their lives to insurgency in Assam in the past two decades.