A powerful bomb exploded during an Independence Day parade in India’s remote north-east on Sunday, killing 16 people, mostly schoolchildren, and injuring more than 40 others, despite the country’s prime minister promising to ”fight terrorism forcefully”.
Thirteen schoolchildren, who had been watching a ceremony to mark the end of British rule in India 57 years ago, were killed in the blast at the local college grounds in Dhemaji in Assam state.
Reporters said the blast had ripped through the crowd without warning.
”It was such a powerful blast that the bodies of the dead were in two or three pieces. It was a horrific tragedy,” New Delhi TV’s reporter Kishalay Bhattacharjee told viewers.
The outlawed United Liberation Front of Asom, which had warned people to stay away from celebrations, was suspected. The group has been fighting for an independent Assam since 1979.
After the bombing witnesses say the crowd took to the streets in Dhemaji. ”The people started attacking the police and trying to burn government buildings. The crowd was angry because they said they had been promised protection if they came out to celebrate independence day,” said Bhattacharjee.
Earlier, India’s prime minister, Manmohan Singh said his government would take a tough stand against groups which opted for violence rather than seeking to resolve issues by talking to New Delhi.
”We will fight terrorism forcefully. Let there be no doubt about it. But if a group is ready to give up arms and talk to us, we are ready,” Singh said from the Red Fort, a tradition followed by each prime minister since Indian gained independence from Britain on August 15 1947.
The chief minister of Assam, Tarun Gogoi, said there were ”intelligence reports of a bomb attack but not the exact position”. Admitting that the deaths may have been as a result of a security failings, he said there appeared to have been lapses which he would punish.
The states of north-east India provided the first real jolt to the country’s integrity in the 1970s. That decade saw separatist movements erupting in Assam, Mizoram, Tripura, Nagaland, Arunachal Pradesh, and Meghalaya.
Carved out of the old British Raj province of Assam, these states were politically integrated with the rest of post-1947 India but were geographically and culturally remote. Today only Mizoram and Meghalaya are quiet.
A state of 26-million people, Assam is rich in oil and tea but has been unable to exploit its natural wealth because of the 25 year insurgency. – Guardian Unlimited Â