A series of bomb blasts and attacks in India's northeast killed 46 people today in one of the bloodiest days in the troubled region.
Two bombs exploded in a marketplace in Dimapur, commercial centre of the state of Nagaland, while a third ripped through a crowded railway station there almost simultaneously, an officer at the local police station said.
Twenty-six people died in the Nagaland attacks, the deadliest since a ceasefire with the main Naga separatist group began seven years ago.
Later, tribal rebels fighting for a separate homeland in the neighbouring state of Assam killed 11 people. One man died in another bomb explosion in Assam and eight more people were killed in four separate grenade attacks.
Police said the attacks in Nagaland and Assam appeared to be unrelated.
The blasts in Christian-majority Nagaland could have been set off by any of several smaller separatist groups that are not part of the truce with the Indian government, officials said.
The biggest group, the National Socialist Council of Nagaland (Isaac-Muivah), which has fought for a separate Naga nation for more than half a century, has held several rounds of talks with government officials but with no breakthrough.
Police in Assam blamed the deaths there on two different separatist groups fighting for independence in the state.
India's mountainous northeast is home to dozens of underground groups, some fighting for greater autonomy, or statehood and others for secession. The groups accuse the federal government of plundering the region's rich resources and neglecting the local economy.
Security analysts say successive Indian governments have largely ignored the northeast, focusing almost entirely on the rebellion in the disputed region of Kashmir.