India\\\'s military hunts rebels after attacks in Assam

GUWAHATI, India, Dec 25 (Reuters): India deployed military helicopters to hunt down tribal militants in the northeastern state of Assam on Thursday after rebels killed 75 people this week, the deadliest in the remote area in years.
Assam has a history of sectarian bloodshed and armed groups fighting for secession from India.
On Tuesday, suspected militants of a faction of the National Democratic Front of Bodoland attacked four villages in the space of an hour, pulling people out of their homes and shooting them dead.
More than half of the victims were women and children of tea plantation workers from outside the state, Assam Chief Minister Tarun Gogoi said as more bodies were discovered in the remote area.
The attacks appeared to have been in retaliation for an offensive that security forces launched against the Bodo faction a month ago that inflicted heavy losses. The militant group lost 40 men and a huge quantity of arms and ammunition, state police said.
The rebels turned on plantation workers, believing that some were informing the police about their movements.
"This is an act of terrorism. We are going to be very tough," federal Home Minister Rajnath Singh, who flew to the state, told reporters.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi's government took power in May promising economic development and a tough stance on national security. "We have said there will be zero tolerance for terrorism," Singh said.
India's northeast region, bounded by China, Myanmar, Bhutan and Bangladesh, is home to more than 200 ethnic groups. The region has trailed the rest of India in economic development and the gap has widened in recent years, fuelling discontent.
For decades, the Bodos have been fighting for a state of their own called Bodoland, accusing New Delhi of plundering their state's resources and flooding the area with outsiders. The group follows a distinctive culture and speaks a Tibeto-Burman language.
A military official said helicopters were scouring the jungles of Assam to track down militants trying to flee to Bhutan and the neighbouring Indian state of Arunachal Pradesh, which has thickly forested mountains.
About 5,000 additional soldiers have been deployed to Assam in response to this week's attacks, the government said.
Meanwhile, More than 2,000 people have fled their homes in the restive Indian state of Assam after separatist rebels killed dozens of villagers, some of them children, an official said Thursday.
Residents sought shelter in makeshift camps set up by the state government following a series of coordinated attacks by armed rebels Tuesday that left at least 69 people dead, 18 of them children.
Another three people were killed on Wednesday when police shot at villagers who went to a police station to demand justice over the attacks.
"More than 2,000 villagers have sought shelter in relief camps. People are of course scared and worried about violence flaring up again," a state welfare official told AFP on condition of anonymity.
The tea-growing state of Assam in northeast India has seen violent land disputes in the past between the indigenous Bodo people, Muslim settlers, and rival tribes in the area.
Police blamed Tuesday's attacks on the outlawed National Democratic Front of Bodoland (NDFB), which has waged a violent decades-long campaign for an independent homeland for the Bodo.
Rights groups have in the past accused India's government of not doing enough to tackle violence in the country's remote northeast, which is home to many marginalised communities.
But Home Minister Rajnath Singh said authorities would be "tough" on those behind the latest killings, which he called "an act of terror".