Officials: India Bombers Had Outside Help

The level of sophistication in the bombings that killed at least 76 people in northeastern India indicate that local militants had help from other terrorist groups to carry out the attacks, officials said Friday.

The scale and planning behind Thursday's 13 coordinated blasts in Assam state surprised authorities, who struggled to determine who was behind the attacks - among the worst ever in a region plagued by separatism and ethnic violence.

The death toll in the explosions rose to 76 on Friday after more than a dozen people died from their injuries overnight, said Subhas Das, the state's home commissioner. More than 300 people were wounded.

Assam state Inspector General of Police Bhaskar Jyoti Mahanta said the state's largest separatist group, the United Liberation Front of Asom, was the main target of the investigation, but he added that the sophistication of the blasts suggested the rebel group was "assisted by a force who has adequate expertise in such attacks." He did not elaborate.

Anjan Borehaur, a spokesman for the United Liberation Front of Asom, denied his group had any role in the blasts.

The separatist group has never carried out an attack of this size and complexity, which closely resembled bombings that have rocked other Indian cities this year. Those attacks were blamed on well-financed and well-armed Islamic militant groups.

Federal investigators and forensic experts sifted through the rubble of the blasts Friday for clues.

Mahanta said that preliminary investigations indicated the militants had used PE-3, a complex plastic explosive.

The bombs were planted in cars and rickshaws, and the largest explosion took place near the office of Assam's top government official, leaving bodies and charred, mangled cars and motorcycles strewn across the road.

Bystanders dragged the wounded and dead to cars that took them to hospitals. Police officers covered charred bodies with white sheets in the street.

Later, dozens of people angry over the blasts took to the streets of the state capital, Gauhati, stoning vehicles and torching at least two fire engines. Police imposed a curfew on the city and closed roads leading in and out of the area.

India's northeast - an isolated region wedged between Bangladesh, Bhutan, China and Myanmar with only a thin corridor connecting it to the rest of India - is beset by dozens of conflicts. More than 10,000 people have died in separatist violence over the past decade in the region.

In October, more than 50 people were killed in violence between members of the Bodo tribe and recent migrants to the area, most of whom are Muslims.

The region is also home to dozens of separatist groups who accuse the government of exploiting the area's natural resources while doing little for the indigenous people - most of whom are ethnically closer to Burma and China than to the rest of India.