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GUWAHATI, India - Unidentified militants shot dead five migrant labourers as they slept in a remote village in India's volatile Manipur state, police said today.
They were among six people killed and more than a dozen wounded in overnight rebel attacks in two troubled states in India's northeast.
The five migrants were from the eastern state of Bihar and were working on a road construction project in the Bishenpur area, 30 km southwest of Manipur's state capital, Imphal.
"A group of three to four militants armed with automatic weapons stormed the makeshift shelter of the labourers and opened indiscriminate fire on them, killing all five on the spot," a police officer, who could not be named, told Reuters by phone.
No group has claimed responsibility. Manipur has battled separatist violence since the 1960s and more than 20,000 people have been killed.
In January, separatists in neighbouring Assam killed dozens of migrants from Bihar and other poor eastern states.
The separatists accused New Delhi of flooding the state with outsiders in a bid to reduce the indigenous population to a minority.
In Assam, suspected separatist guerrillas threw a grenade near a police station in the oil- and tea-rich state overnight, killing one and wounding 17 others, including two women.
A senior military officer said rebels of the United Liberation Front of Asom (ULFA) were behind the attack at Kakopathar in Tinsukia district, about 550km east of Guwahati, the state's main city, also late on Thursday.
India's northeast -- made up of eight states, and bordered by China, Bhutan, Bangladesh and Myanmar -- is home to more than 200 ethnic and tribal communities and has been racked by separatist and tribal insurgencies for the past six decades.
- REUTERS
