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 that brought the weekend death toll to 59 with 205 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 10 others were killed in fresh violence Sunday, police said.
In New York, UN Secretary General Kofi Annan strongly condemned the bombings and shootings, saying he had learnt of the violence with "shock and dismay."
The weekend of bloodshed started early Saturday as India commemorated the birth of the country's independence leader Mahatma Gandhi, a champion of non-violence.
It also coincided with the 18th anniversary of the founding of the National Democratic Front of Bodoland (NDFB), one of around 30 rebel groups fighting for greater autonomy or independence in the region.
Police blamed the attacks on the NDFB and other rebel groups.
India's Home Minister Shivraj Patil who arrived in Nagaland Sunday after a brief stopover in Assam, said the government would take "very strong steps" to deal with militancy.
"We will have to find a long term solution to bring about an end to insurgency in the region," he said before visiting some of the injured in hospital.
On Saturday in Dimapur, the commercial hub of Nagaland, 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 waiting for a train.
"There were limbs everywhere and blood was splattered all over," said student leader T. Zheviho.
Late Saturday, one person was killed when gunmen fired on a train near Bagmari village in eastern Assam.
Nagaland authorities blamed the attacks on rebels seeking to disrupt the peace process.
Several attacks on targets including crowded markets in the region on Sunday left a further six people dead and scores wounded.
Three NDFB rebels were also killed, apparently when the explosive device they were planting exploded, police said.
Services were held Sunday in churches across Nagaland, which has a large Christian population, to pray for families of the 28 people killed in the bomb blasts that rocked Dimapur.
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.
A statement from the National Democratic Front of Bodoland Sunday claimed responsibility for the Assam shootings saying: "The attacks were a proof of our strength."
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.