A LOT OF DEVOLVING TO DO:

New Bomb Blast Wounds 15 in India (WASBIR HUSSAIN, October 3, 2004, Associated Press)

Suspected separatists bombed a power line, a gas pipeline, a tea plantation and a crowded marketplace in northeastern India on Sunday, intensifying a campaign of violence that has killed more than 50 people and wounded at least 100 over the last two days.

The violence, affecting the states of Nagaland and Assam, was among the deadliest to hit the region, where more than three dozen insurgent groups have been active. They include one of Asia's longest running separatist conflicts, dating to shortly before India gained independence from Britain in 1947.

As troops patrolled streets in Nagaland Sunday, a bomb exploded in Dhekiagula, a village about 100 miles north of Gauhati, the Assam state capital. Police said 15 people were wounded.

Also Sunday, suspected rebels targeted a gas pipeline with a land mine blast near the village of Borhat in western Assam, 125 miles west of Gauhati, police said. The extent of the damage was unknown.

Also in Borhat, a tea garden worker was killed and two others seriously injured when suspected guerrillas detonated a bomb at their plantation, Press Trust of India news agency said.

Two suspected rebels of the outlawed National Democratic Front of Bodoland were killed when explosives they were carrying detonated in Assam's Sonitpur district, PTI said.

Another bomb exploded at a shop in Dabosal in western Assam, wounding its owner, said A.K. Bhutani, the district magistrate. And in the nearby town of Chitra, suspected militants blew up an electrical transmission tower, snapping the power supply to the area, Bhutani said.

Federal Home Minister Shivraj Patil visited Assam and Nagaland on Sunday to assess the violence, which began Saturday when suspected separatists detonated a bomb at a packed railway station and sprayed gunfire into bustling markets.

Nagaland's death toll stood at 28 on Sunday, while Assam's rose to 25. No group claimed responsibility and it wasn't clear whether the nine attacks in Nagaland and Assam states were linked.

But Inspector-General Khagen Sarma, the top police official of Assam state, told The Associated Press he "cannot rule out" the possible involvement of the outlawed National Democratic Front of Boroland, a tribal separatist group that is active in the region.

Sunday is the 18th anniversary of the group, which is demanding a homeland for Boroland, a region that straddles both states. On Friday, Assam Chief Minister Tarun Gogoi, the state's top elected official, offered a truce to the Boroland rebels and the region's largest insurgent group -- the United Liberation front of Assam -- beginning Oct. 16 if they accepted a cease-fire.

Nagaland has also been the scene of an insurgency that has killed 15,000 people since Naga rebels began fighting for a separate nation nearly six decades ago. The rebels want special status for Nagaland state, which borders Myanmar and where most of the 2 million Nagas -- most Christians -- live in predominantly Hindu India.

Even most Indians don't think of Nagaland as India.

Posted by Orrin Judd at October 3, 2004 9:21 AM