Tribal people armed with guns and bows and arrows raided a village in troubled Assam, killing three villagers in the latest clashes with Bangladeshi settlers, police said on Monday.At least 36 people had lost their lives and thousands left homeless in violence that started over the weekend between indigenous Bodo tribes and Bangladeshi settlers. At least 12 people were killed by police firing.More than 1,000 federal police have been deployed in the northeast state, but the state government says it still needs more forces to contain the violence.The clash has reignited a long-simmering conflict as local Assam tribes, mainly Hindu but with some Christians, fear being overrun by Muslim immigrants. More than 40 per cent of Assam is now Muslim, mainly immigrant settlers.The clashes are some of the worst since 1983, when more than 2,000 people, mainly Bangladeshi immigrants, were killed in clashes with tribal peoples in central Assam.The current conflict was sparked by an increasingly strong student movement that has been campaigning against immigrants, analysts say.More than 100 people have been injured and 50,000 have fled their homes to take refuge in makeshift camps set up by the police."Locals are threatened by the growing Muslim population, which is above 40 per cent," said Noni Gopal Mahanta, of the Peace and Conflict Studies Centre of Gauhati University."There has been simmering tension for quite sometime and now the situation is grim," Mahanta said.The violence is the latest communal violence to hit India. In Orissa state, clashes between Hindus and Christians over conversions have killed at least 36 people.In Assam, officials have blamed the National Democratic Front of Bodoland (NDFB), a tribal separatist group, for being behind the violence. Security forces have caught four NDFB militants with weapons in the violence-hit area."It's a pre-planned ethnic cleansing instigated by the NDFB," said Himanta Biswa Sarma, a senior minister in Assam.The NDFB, a largely Christian group, has held to a ceasefire with New Delhi over the past few years and has denied the charge. Tribal groups blame New Delhi for neglecting their welfare, ignoring development of the region and flooding the area with outsiders.Ringed by China, Myanmar, Bangladesh and Bhutan, India's northeast is home to more than 200 tribes and has been racked by separatist revolts since India gained independence from Britain in 1947.
