At least 33 people have been killed and thousands left homeless in violence over the weekend between tribal people and Bangladeshi settlers in northeast India, police and hospital authorities said.

Violence between Bodo tribes people and immigrant Muslims broke out on Friday in Rowta in Assam state's Udalguri district, about 100 km north of Dispur, the state capital. It has since spread to neighboring districts.

"The picture is hazy and compilation of casualty figures has become difficult because of the continuing arson," said state government spokesman Himanta Biswa Sarma. "We are mobilizing all resources to control the situation.

The deaths include eight people shot by police yesterday. Police said they opened fire on rioters.

Villagers from the two communities fought with guns, bows and arrows, machetes and spears. More than 100 have been injured and 50,000 have fled their homes to take refuge in makeshift camps set up by the police.

The fighting began on Friday when a group of young Bodo men were attacked after they finished patrolling their villages. Bodo leaders blamed the incident on relatively recent settlers, most of whom are Muslims, sparking several days of clashes, state official Rajib Bora said.

"Shoot-on-sight orders have been issued and curfew has been imposed in the violence-hit areas," Assam's chief minister Tarun Gogoi said.

Many of the dead were burned to death and more than a dozen people with serious burns have been taken to hospital in Guwahati, the state's main city.

A senior police officer, who asked not to be named, said attackers had set fire to their rivals' houses.

Authorities have called in army and paramilitary forces.

"The local administration failed to take immediate action to control the situation when the trouble initially started and later it flared up," Gogoi said.

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.

Muslim settlers from Bangladesh have moved into the region in recent decades.

Animosity between the Bodos and Muslim migrants stems from long-standing land disputes in the region. The groups clashed sporadically throughout the 1990s, leaving at least 250 dead and an estimated 300,000 displaced.

Nearly 100,000 people are still living in makeshift relief camps.

(China Daily via agencies October 6, 2008)