GUWAHATI, India (AFP) - India's insurgency-racked northeast was reeling from one of its deadliest waves of violence in years, as police reported more killings overnight that brought the death toll to 53 with 141 injured.
A string of bloody blasts and shootouts in adjoining Assam and Nagaland states on Saturday killed at least 44 people. Overnight another five victims died in hospital while four others were killed in fresh violence, police said Sunday.
In New York, UN Secretary General Kofi Annan strongly condemned the bombings and gunfire attacks, saying he had learnt of the violence with "shock and dismay".
The attacks came as India Saturday commemorated the birth of the country's independence leader Mahatma Gandhi, a champion of non-violence.
Fifteen people were wounded Sunday when rebels lobbed a grenade at shoppers in a teeming market in northern Assam's Sonitpur district, 180 kilometres (112 miles) from the main city Guwahati, a police spokesman said.
Late Saturday, one person was killed when gunmen fired on a train near Bagmari village in eastern Assam's Karbi Anglong district.
In another incident, three National Democratic Front of Bodoland (NDFB) militants were killed when an explosive device they were planting exploded in northern Assam's Darrang district early Sunday, police said.
The bloodshed began early Saturday in Dimapur, the commercial hub of Nagaland, when three bombs exploded almost simultaneously in what an official called the "worst ever terrorist strike" in the tiny state's history.
Police said the plastic explosive RDX appeared to have been used in a powerful blast at a railway station in Dimapur that dug out a large crater next to a platform packed with passengers awaiting a train.
"There were limbs everywhere and blood was splattered all over," said student leader T. Zheviho.
Nagaland authorities blamed the attacks on rebels seeking to disrupt the peace process.
Services were planned Sunday in churches across Nagaland, which has a large Christian population, to pray for the 28 people killed in the three bomb blasts that rocked Dimapur.
"We're in a state of shock and disbelief. The only way we can heal the wounds is by offering prayers in memory of the departed and for the well being of those who lived," said G. Ginam, a member of the state's Baptist council.
The attacks shattered the relative calm of mainly agricultural Nagaland, where a truce has been in force with the region's largest separatist group, the National Socialist Council of Nagaland (NSCN), since 1997.
New Delhi and the NSCN have been holding discussions aimed at ending nearly six decades of insurgency in the state of two million. The group denied any hand in the blasts.
In one of the worst strikes in Assam, gunmen Saturday shot at shoppers in a market at Makri Jhora village, 290 kilometres (180 miles) west of Guwahati. Police said 11 were killed and 12 injured.
Assam police official Khagen Sharma blamed the attacks on the United Liberation Front of Asom (ULFA) and the NDFB -- two of around 30 rebel groups fighting for greater autonomy or independence in the region.
A NDFB statement Sunday claimed responsibility for the shootouts in Assam saying: "The attacks were a proof of our strength."
India's Home Minister Shivraj Patil arrived in Assan Sunday for a fact-finding mission that will also take him to Nagaland.
More than 50,000 people have died in the remote northeast in nearly six decades of fighting between security forces and rebel groups who accuse New Delhi of exploiting the area's natural resource wealth.