Security meet after twin blasts rock Assam

GUWAHATI: Top Indian security officials are scheduled to hold a special meeting on Monday, a day after simultaneous bomb attacks killed 12 people and injured dozens in Assam. 

No group has claimed responsibility for the twin blasts on Sunday at an upscale shopping center and near an oil facility in Guwahati, which also injured more than 40 people, 15 of them critically.

The heads of India's military operations and intelligence as well as senior home and paramilitary force officials were to discuss the security situation in the restive state.

State security officials planned to meet in Guwahati, where a dawn-to-dusk strike by opposition political parties to protest the attacks left city streets deserted, except for police and army personnel.  

Entry and exit points to the city were manned by paramilitary forces and soldiers, and searches of all those entering and leaving were underway. 

Most officials suspect the United Liberation Front of Assam of being behind the evening attacks.   

"This is nothing but an act of desperation with the ULFA killing innocent civilians," Assam chief minister Tarun Gogoi said from New Delhi.

Most victims were ordinary shoppers and vendors.   

"We are stepping up security and taking all possible steps to thwart attacks."   

Some said it was early to pinpoint the attackers, expressing fears that other militants might now be operating in the state.  

 "We do not want to rule out the involvement of jihadi groups as they have been trying to target Guwahati for quite some time now," S Kabilan, the state's top bureaucrat, said on Sunday.  

Police said the first bomb ripped through the crowded Fancy Bazaar shopping arcade in central Guwahati, which sells everything from vegetables to electronics and clothes. 

"The bomb at Fancy Bazaar was kept on a bicycle and this is one of the latest modus operandi of the ULFA to keep explosives to target innocent civilians," Assam police intelligence chief Khagen Sharma said on Monday.   

The second bomb went off simultaneously in Patharkuwari on the city's outskirts, leaving at least four civilians dead, state police chief Deepak Narayan Dutt said.

Federal officials suggested the target of the second bombing was installations of the state-owned Indian Oil Corporation in Patharkuwari.  

In the past month, 10 people including several soldiers have died in a dozen bomb attacks in oil, timber and tea rich Assam, which borders Bangladesh and Bhutan.   

The latest attacks come four days after security chiefs in India's seven northeast states called for a joint strategy to combat the twin threats of separatist insurgencies and militancy that afflict the troubled region.   

The northeast is home to more than 30 rebel armies with demands ranging from secession to greater autonomy.   

More than 50,000 people have lost their lives to insurgency  since independence in 1947.