May 12, 2008

Suspected rebels kill 8 railroad workers in India

By WASBIR HUSSAIN

The Associated Press

Suspected rebels lined up and fatally shot eight railroad workers in India's insurgency-wracked northeastern region of Assam, police said Monday.

Sunday's attack came a day after the Indian army killed six rebels in a shootout, police Inspector-General Khagen Sharma said.

The attack took place in the village of Faiding, where the victims were building homes for rail workers, Sharma told The Associated Press. Faiding is about 200 miles south of the Assam state capital, Gauhati.

Sharma said authorities suspect the attack was carried out by a faction of the Dima Halam Daogah rebel group. The rebels are fighting for wide regional autonomy.

'Around 10 armed rebels fired indiscriminately on a group of rail construction workers at Faiding village, killing eight of them late Sunday,' he said.

He said the rebels also attacked a railroad station in the area on Saturday night and killed one rail worker.

Faiphang Dimasa, a spokesman for the rebel group, said in a statement it had ended a nearly two-month cease-fire with the government after its fighters were killed Saturday. However, he did not take responsibility for either of the railway attacks.

Several rebel groups are fighting for autonomy or independence in India's northeast. The militants say the national government exploits the region's rich natural resources while doing little for its indigenous people, most of whom are ethnically closer to people in nearby Myanmar and China than to the rest of India.