21 villagers gunned down in Assam

Ethnic Kuki rebels barged into homes of ethnic Karbis in the village of Dillai before dawn and sprayed them with automatic gunfire, killing 16 people, Assam police chief Khagen Sharma told AFP.

"About a dozen militants armed with automatic weapons descended on the village and shot dead the villagers as they slept. Four people are still being treated for their injuries," Sharma said.

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In the afternoon, gunmen believed to belong to the same rebel group, the Kuki Revolutionary Army, opened fire in the market of the nearby village of Joy Terong, killing five people and wounding two, Sharma said.

Kuki and Karbi rebels are engaged in a bloody turf war in ethnically mixed areas of Assam about 330km east of the state capital Guwahati.

Before Wednesday's massacres, the bloodshed had already claimed more than 100 lives since early 2003.

Assam, better known to the outside world for its sprawling tea plantations, is torn by insurgencies and ethnic strife. Insurrections against the Indian state -- mostly by ethnic Assamese and Bodos -- have claimed more than 10,000 lives in the past two decades.

In November at least 54 settlers from India's Hindi-speaking Ganges plain were killed by ethnic Assamese in bloodshed set off by a dispute over hiring practices at the state-run railways.